Overclocker Cafe - Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Cooler Review

Thermaltake Mini Typhoon Cooler

Looking at the Mini Typhoon's base we found an adequately smooth surface. No irregularities were detected here although the base did lack the luster of having a mirror finish.

The fan looks to be the reason for the "Mini" designation. Thermaltake has shrunk the 120mm fan from the Big Typhoon down to a 92 x 92 x 38mm. The fan design is a bit different than that you normally see. Styled an RX design, it allows air to be pulled from the top and sides of the fan blades as it is caseless. Rated at 2200 RPM, the RX fan moves a nice 38.7 cubic feet of air per minute at a cost to the ear of 18 dBA.

Removing the fan allows a nice view of the high concentration convection fins. This is a good place to move into the accessory 'Value Kit' and what it is and does. A square bracket is placed between the RX fan and the Mini Typhoon. The bracket has three sides with overhanging flanges with each flange having four screw holes. These are your mounting points for the two 50mm blue LED fans. A fan, with its adapter plate installed, may be mounted on the left, right or center of any of the flanges within the confines your case allows.

Here are a couple of shots with the fans mounted in some different positions. If you look closely, you can see that the fan adapter is curved allowing the angle to vary between flush with the board to almost 45 degrees. The ability to place and adjust the fan's positions to suit the end user allows for some added air to be directed at any nearby component you wish.

Installation

Thermaltake's Mini Typhoon can be mounted into an Intel LGA775 based system or an AMD K8 or AM2 rig. To look at mounting ease, we mounted the cooler in all three rigs using a Chaintech i915 board and a Foxconn C51XEM2AA AM2 board in addition to our standard Foxconn NF4SK8AA. Installation went well but did show us two issues with the Mini Typhoon. The first being the 'Value Kit' 50mm fans. While the sink bracket allows for lots of potential adjustments to blow air on memory or other board components, the actual leeway is determined by the case and components you have. We installed our test rig into a Lian Li PC-65 Plus and found that the fan's full adjustments were severely curtailed by the case, cables and the components installed. This will vary from chassis to chassis, so the end user needs to at least gauge clearances first.

We have to have a quick shot of the fans under power you know.

The other issue will affect users depending on the type of mainboard they have. We did not find this issue in any of the other boards we tried except the socket AM2 based Foxconn C51XEM2AA. With the Foxconn C51XEM2AA, the DIMM slots are a bit closer to the socket area than they are on other boards we've had here in the shop. The heatpipes of the Mini Typhoon curve over DIMM 1. Unfortunately, the curve was enough to make that DIMM slot unusable. I was only able to take this picture after removing the cooler's mounting clip and sliding the cooler sideways a couple of millimeters. Moving dual channel memory from DIMM 1 and 3 to 2 and 4 can fix the problem but I can name more than a few friends of mine who keep every DIMM on their boards full. This was only seen on one board but again, something the end user needs to be aware of to gauge clearances first.

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