SilentiumPC Fera 5 CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

Out of the box, the SilentiumPC Fera 5 presents itself well with a nice combination of black and stainless steel aesthetics. With a nice weighty feel in the hand, despite the relatively humble price tag, this does feel like a very solid unit. As with all CPU coolers, however, there are a lot of individual aspects that go into the overall design. Let’s, therefore, take a closer look at some of the key components of the Fera 5 and see what we think.

Contact Plate

The contact plate has a total of 4 copper pipes leading away from each side. With the copper fully exposed this should, at least in theory, provide some excellent heat transfer to the radiator. It should also be noted that the radiator itself has a nice aesthetic pattern to the base. Albeit, admittedly one that is practically redundant as you’ll only ever see when you have the cooler outside and upside down.

The contact plate isn’t overly large. A factor that clearly demonstrates why this cooler isn’t AMD TR4 compatible (not that we’d recommend fitting a budget-cooler to one of those monsters anyway). With its well-polished surface, however, this will be entirely suitable for good coverage on all consumer-level Intel and AMD processors.

Radiator

The fins to the radiator are well situated with a surprisingly decent level of overlap provided to the different sections. With this in mind though, the gaps between the fins are still more than sufficient for a good level of airflow from the fan. Albeit, as can be seen in the picture below, they are quite thin meaning that denting them is pretty easy to do when handling and/or fitting fans. Not, incidentally, that this is uncommon for the vast majority of air CPU coolers.

The top of the radiator has a black plastic covering with some SilentiumPC branding located to the centre. Contrasting against the stainless steel radiator, it looks very sleek and stylish and, as such, should suit the vast majority of system requirements for looking decent without any reliance on ARGB lighting.

In terms of the fan and where it sits in relation to the radiator. The covering does have inserts which the fan very snuggly fits into. Continuing with the black aesthetic and its a design choice that works very well, at least in my opinion.

The side of the radiator even has a section advising you as to which way to mount the fan for the most optimal performance. While we suspect that, in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn’t make much of a difference if you go this the ‘wrong’ way around, SilentiumPC is dropping you a pretty strong hint here that benefits will be seen from following their methodology.

Fan

With this particular Fera 5 CPU cooler model, you are only provided with 1 cooling fan. Albeit, with the release of the Fera 5 Dual Fan variant (which we have also reviewed), you can opt for a alternative design that allows you to ‘double up’ on this aspect.

The fan itself is perhaps the single biggest aspect in which SilentiumPC has really cranked the visuals up into a whole new year. The edges of the blades carry a very distinctive pattern with some company branding worked into the corner of the fan casing. – There are also some nice thick anti-vibration rubber pads to the corners, albeit take care when installing as these do have the habit to pop out of place. Don’t worry though, they’re easily enough put back.

A closer look reveals this to be a SilentiumPC designed ‘Fluctus’ 120mm PWM fan. Something that is definitely a hugely positive factor as this lets us presume that its performance has been optimised to work as best as possible with this coolers design/operation.

Overall

While I’m not going to lie and say that this is a premium level cooling solution, but what SilentiumPC has achieved here on a very friendly budget is nothing short of remarkable. Put simply, it’s an inexpensive cooler, but it doesn’t really look or feel like one. Yes, it carries a lot of the hallmarks that you would expect with a less-expensive CPU cooler, but in terms of the finished product and overall design, for what this costs, I’m not entirely certain how SilentiumPC has been able to produce something this good (and clearly still be able to sell it for a profit!).

Given the relatively slim side profile of the Fera 5, RAM compatibility should present absolutely no problem here and, on the whole, this is certainly looking to be a nice CPU cooler both in terms of its presentation and clearly well thought out design. How it looks, however, is only one relatively small aspect of this review. This is a CPU cooler after all and, by proxy, has a very important job to do. So, with that in mind, how is its performance? Well, first things first, we’ve actually got to get this fitted. So let’s find out just how easy, or hard, that process is!