Thermaltake Beetle Cooler

The Coleoptera

The Beetle rates as one of, if not the largest cooler I've ever seen.  Sitting next to my watch below you get a good idea of how large this thing is.

The face of the cooler sports a 90 x 25mm fan.  The fan is a variable rate number that has a three pin power connector and a speed control connector so it may be attached to either of the two rheostats included.

Taking a quick look around the Tt Beetle we find that the fan and the cooling fins are positioned so that they channel air across the fins parallel to the mainboard.  This type of setup allows hot air to be blown in the direction of a rear case fan or the intake fan of your PSU (if it has a bottom mounted fan) depending on the mounting orientation your mainboard accepts.

Three large heatpipes form a 'U' shape up from the base.  The heatpipes conduct heat up from the base to the convection fins more efficiently than standard cooler designs.  The plastic housing helps channel this air through the Tt Beetle to maximize its performance.  Something else you may notice is that on the rear of the beetle are four screw holes.  These holes allow for the adding in of a second fan (80mm.)

The base by all observations was flush but was far from having the highly reflective shine we have come to expect on many high end coolers.  In the first pic below, check out the hip wire mesh covering Tt wrapped the power line with.

Installation

Unfortunately, we are not going to install the Tt Beetle in the five different applications it can fit.  Aside from being very time intensive, I simply don't have five different rigs based on the LGA775 through the AMD Sempron and everything in between laying around.  We are however going to install the Beetle into our overclocked P4 478 rig. 

While the instructions Tt provided do not call for mainboard removal in every instance, attempting to mount the Beetle without doing so will be a significant challenge.  The problem is the size of the cooler.  Installing the cooler inside a case will require you to have some very small hands to get to the mounting plates.  The P4 installation hinged around two small screws to tighten a holding bracket down snuggly.  It took me a good five minutes even with the board out of the case to install two screws without shifting the Tt Beetle's position.  Difficulty was significant and was where you almost were angry enough to start throwing things but remained able to exercise restraint.

Here's a quick shot of the Beetle attached to our ASUS P4C800E Deluxe mainboard.  As you can see below the orientation of the processor forces the Beetle to aim upwards toward the PSU.

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