Prolimatech Black Megahalems CPU Cooler Review

Prolimatech’s Black Megahalems currently costs about £49.99 in the UK and €59.90 in Europe.If you perhaps feel that the Black Megahalems is not to your taste, or you just don’t want to pay extra for a colour scheme you can’t see or don’t appreciate then you can pick up the “normal” silver version for £42.99 or €49.99 which is a fair bit cheaper. If we then factor in the price of a 140mm fan, or whatever fan configuration you choose, then you will probably end up spending £10-40 on fans depending on the brand, size and quality. The particular fan we used was the Prolimatech Vortex 140mm Aluminium series fan with red LEDs and this costs about £20/€22 which is quite a lot but you certainly get a very high performance fan even if it is on the noisy side. Of course if you were more noise conscious you could easily opt for some Noctua fans or for a pair of cheap low RPM 140mm fans. Your options really are quite flexible in that regard.

The Black Megahalems certainly proved itself to me as a very strong product. The performance it is capable of is just brilliant, with just one 1600RPM fan we managed to eek out performance better than many other dual fan coolers of a similar calibre. Furthermore we were knocking at the door of some 240mm AIO coolers like the Corsair H100i, Swiftech H220 and so on. I certainly feel that this is by no means an affordable option, and it is not that affordable with an “on-the-road” price of £50 if you get the silver version with a cheap-ish 140mm fan, if you choose our configuration then it is about £70, or £62 with the Silver Megahalems. This makes it quite expensive, even by air cooler standards, being around the price of an Noctua NH-D14 or NH-U14US yet it is clearly capable of matching or surpassing those performance levels, though this will be strongly dependent on your choice of fan.

Performance aside the Black Megahalems is a very nice quality product. Prolimatech are one of very few companies to offer black heatsinks and that alone makes the black Megahalems a very special product. Everything else Prolimatech did just ticked boxes for me, they went to the trouble of including loads of fan clips to give you maximum flexibility in whatever fans you choose. If you do find you need more fan clips you can buy them separately too. Furthermore they include a large tube of the high quality PK2 thermal compound and they powder coated in black all the mounting brackets which really is brilliant attention to detail – not to mention the powder coat is very finger print resistant which is great. The mounting kit itself is very strong and intuitive and will definitely put minimal strain on the motherboard.

Pros

• Black finish is amazing
• Superior performance
• Solid mounting system
• Excellent accessories/bundle
• LGA 2011 support (which it really needed to have)

Cons

• RAM clearance isn’t great
• On the expensive side
• 140mm fans add about 10-15mm to the heatsinks height as RAM modules force them upwards making the total height more like 170/175mm.

eTeknix says: Prolimatech’s Megahalems is just a truly epic CPU cooler in terms of performance and with the Black-finish version Prolimatech have produced something that most enthusiasts would shed a tear for. It certainly isn’t friendly on your wallet but it offers a great deal of performance and just oozes premium quality. While I’d normally curse companies for not including fans, Prolimatech’s decision to not include them is brilliant because it gives you tonnes of flexibility to pick and choose the fan configuration that suits your needs making the Megahalems one of the most versatile high performance CPU coolers on the market today.

Thank you to Overclockers UK and CaseKing for providing us with this review sample.