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Asus Triton 88 Review - Page 5
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Considering how impressed I once was with the Tuniq Tower, I don't think I was prepared for just how well the Triton 88 performed. I thought it might be as good as, or perhaps slightly better than the Tuniq Tower given the increased number of heatpipes, but I wasn't expecting a sizeable 7 degree reduction in load temperatures. The default Triton 88 fan appears to perform similarly to the stock Tuniq Tower fan on this platform, although the Triton fan is slightly noisier. To see how the Triton fan performed at lower speeds, I enabled Q-Quiet in the BIOS of the motherboard, and choose the silent fan profile. With the stock fan spinning more slowly, the cooling performance was identical to that produced by the Sharkoon fan, although the Sharkoon fan was still noticeably quieter, despite it running at full speed.
The quad-core Core i7 920 ups the ante somewhat when it comes to the amount of heat that needs to be removed when under load, and while the reference Intel heatsink 'copes', it's hard to say that it does it well when it's hits 77 degrees at stock frequencies under load, there's little room for overclocking the processor here. The Triton 88 on the other hand knocks 22-23 degrees off these numbers under load with its stock fan, and still manages to reduce the load temperature by over ten degrees with the silent Sharkoon fan, which produces much less airflow. By the way, in case you feel that the load temperatures seem a little high, just remember that IntelBurnTest produces unnaturally high load temperatures which are higher than 'normal' load temperatures. Encoding a DivX on the Core i7 machine, using the Triton fitted with a low airflow Sharkoon fan produces temperatures of just over 50 degrees, which is pretty impressive! Conclusion Currently retailing for £51.74 Inc VAT from Scan, the Triton 88 might not be the cheapest air cooler you can currently buy, but given the level of performance you get it might well be one of the best value, especially when compared to much more expensive water coolers which perform to a similar level. At low speeds the Asus fan is fairly quiet, although there was a low-level hum that I wouldn't like to live with myself. Most people probably wouldn't notice this above the average PSU fan, but I'm rather picky about such things! This fan clearly wasn't designed with low speeds in mind, much like the stock Tuniq Tower fan, although the fan is no noiser than the Intel reference design when at low speed. The Triton 88, much like the Tuniq Tower, copes fairly well in low airflow conditions, although slightly less so on the LGA1366 platform (no doubt due to the increased heat output of the CPU). The Triton doesn't come with a bundled fan controller like the Tuniq Tower did, but the Asus fan is of the 4-pin PWM variety, so as long as you have a newish motherboard, you should be able to control the fan speed with no extra hardware. Installing the Triton is about as fiddly as fitting the Tuniq Tower, although saying that, the Tuniq required you to push an 'H' bar through the heatpipes, balance this on a notch on the top of the base, and then line the 'H' bar up with the mounting plate holes underneath the motherboard, so if anything the Triton is actually slightly easier to get on and off). Regardless of difficulty though, it's a very secure mechanism, and with something weighing nearly 900g, this can only be a good thing. Overall, the Triton 88 packs some serious cooling power, and produced very good temperatures for an air-based cooler. So if the high price tag is not a problem for you, then the Triton 88 should be at the top of your list if you're on the market for a new heatsink. Tuniq Tower, your long lost cousin is here. Pros
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