Prolimatech All for Extreme Basic 81 CPU Cooler Review

Introduction

Prolimatech have been growing in popularity since they formed in 2008, offering a sturdy range of coolers for reasonable prices and that’s something that certainly caught my attention. Today is the first time I get to review a Prolimatech product, so I’m eager to see what all the fuss is about. Their new Basic 81, as the name would imply, isn’t anything overly fancy, but on the other hand, the Prolimatech range is branded “All for Extreme”, so rather than bargain bin performance, Prolimatech seem to be aiming for the bare essentials of high-end cooling, so it’ll be interesting to see what this cooler has to offer.

“The Basic Series offers competitive solid performance at a budget level price! They are designed to be affordable while still maintaining the reliable quality you’ve come to expect from us. They are an excellent option for replacing stock coolers in any system, for improved cooling, quieter operation, and even overclocking! Check out the 5 different models to find the perfect cooler for your hardware, be it small media centers to massive hungry processors!” – Prolimatech

There are six 6mm heat pipes on this cooler, which is a lot of heat pipe for a cooler of this size. One thing that is super important to point out is that this cooler is for Intel platforms only, sorry AMD fans, you’re going to have to look elsewhere.

• Dual tower design offers massive cooling surface area.
• Six high quality heat pipes for superior cooling.
• Quick and easy installation.
• Mounting Kit for Intel socket LGA 1156/1155/1150/2011.
• Includes a PWM 120x120x25mm Double-Ball Bearing Fan for longer life ( 600 to 1600 RPM).

“The Basic 81 features six high-quality heat pipes and one PWM 120mm Double-Ball bearing fan. Its large size offers excellent cooling ability and is capable of providing intensive heat dissipation. Intel-compatible only.” – Prolimatech

In the box you’ll find an Intel backplate, mounting plates, high-quality screws, fan retention clips and a small tube of thermal grease.

The fan seems of a good quality and comes with an 11-blade design.

The fan comes with a double ball-bearing motor, so it should be reasonably quiet. There’s also a braided cable, although you can see the coloured cables on the back of the fan, these will be hidden once it is mounted on the cooling tower.

First impressions of the cooler are very good. The fin stack feels pretty durable and there’s clearly a lot of surface area on offer to help with heat transfer.

There’s a total of 6 heat-pipes with a “U” shaped design that has the pipes pass through each side of the cooling tower.

The cooler has a split design, with a channel through the middle to help with airflow. This means that the leaf and right side of the heat pipes cool relatively independent of each other.

The left and right side of the cooling tower has deep grooves cut into it, these are for the fan retention clips, which fix directly onto the sides of the cooler.

The top plate is very nicely finished with a polished top section and an embossed design; the design reminds me of the Transformers logo.

6 x 6mm is a lot for a cooler of this size, so I would expect performance to be pretty good. You can see the heat pipes give nearly 100% coverage of the copper base plate, so heat transfer should be pretty good.

The copper contact plate is polished to a mirror shine and is nice and smooth, which should mean a nice clean fit over your CPU.

With the fan mounted, the cooler is still quite slim, so ram compatibility should be high. Now, let’s get this thing mounted on our motherboard and put it to the test!