Gelid Slim Silence A-Plus Low Profile (1U Server) CPU Cooler

Gelid have set the MSRP of the Slim Silence A-Plus at $24.99/€19.99 and we have seen it retailing in the UK for £16.49 at SpecialTech and £17.99 at QuietPC. This certainly makes the Gelid Slim Silence A-Plus expensive given it doesn’t even perform better than a stock cooler. BUT, and this is the important bit, this cooler was designed for extremely space constrained environments.

If Gelid wanted to create a budget cooler beats the AMD stock cooler, they would do that. In fact they have done that already with the Siberian CPU Cooler. Yet the Slim Silence A-Plus isn’t designed for that, it isn’t even designed for compact systems or HTPCs, it is designed for 1U servers and other space constrained environments like Panel PCs and Car PCs. In this sense it is unique and I don’t see many other cooling companies producing these. Most business and companies have to get these types of ultra compact coolers custom made, or pre-integrated into the 1U servers, which can often be very expensive or choose from the very limited range of 1U CPU coolers currently available on the market made by a handful of companies. Gelid are expanding the 1U CPU cooler market offerings with the Slim Silence A-Plus as a 1U compatible CPU cooler that will suit the needs of any person or company using any 1U AMD server perfectly well. If you have a 1U Intel server then Gelid also make the Slim Silence I-Plus and Slim Silence 775.

Pros

• Ultra compact design – very unique and few competitors
• Reasonably quiet for the server environment
• High quality GC2 thermal paste included
• Gelid give you a stock AMD backplate even though you might already have one
• 5 year warranty
• PWM ball bearing fan
• Capable of taming 65W AMD CPUs

Cons

• Costly relative to AMD stock cooler
• Doesn’t offer good value outside the 1U server or ultra-compact PC environment
• Fails to tame 95/100W CPUs in our testing
• Beaten by AMD stock cooler
• Heat pipes seem weakly integrated into aluminium heatsinks
• Gelid don’t offer replacement 65mm frameless fans despite the fan being removable

eTeknix says: The Gelid Slim Silence A-Plus may appear to give underwhelming performance to the average end user but for the 1U server and ultra compact PC markets it delivers an excellent level of cooling performance and acoustic performance given its tiny height of just 28mm. This isn’t a product everyone is going to need but for the market segment it targets it does very well indeed.

Thanks to Gelid for providing this review sample.