Thermaltake Frio Advanced CPU Cooler Review

When Thermaltake released their Frio a short while ago, much of the enthusiast market were somewhat surprised by the class-leading performance on offer. The single tower CPU cooler managed to show excellent cooling potential that put it ahead of a large proportion of the single tower cooling market and even some of the dual tower market. Since then though, there has been a lot of change. More high performance CPU coolers have been released from the likes of Phanteks with their PH-TC14PE, Corsair and Antec with their all-in-one liquid cooling units and even Thermaltake with their own upgrade to the original Frio, the Frio OCK. Today’s sample, the Thermaltake Frio Advanced, definitely has some tough competition.

As the name suggests, Thermaltake have kept some of the cooler’s fundamentals the same. Changes come in the form of 5 6mm copper heatpipes in a H.D.T. design, a slightly revamped aesthetic design and a different pair of fans. The 130mm fans that Thermaltake choose to use are capable of up to 2000 RPM and use the very convenient 4-pin PWM connection. 2 high powered fans coupled with a dense aluminium fin array should make for excellent heat dissipation potential. The benefits of the H.D.T. design base’s heat transfer rate should become evident when used in conjunction with the aforementioned heat dissipation features. Let’s hope that our hot Core i7 2600K doesn’t saturate the claimed 230W heat extraction limit of those 5 copper heatpipes.

Thermaltake have designed their Frio Advanced to support all modern Intel and AMD sockets including the brand new LGA 2011. Priced at a very appealing £50/€50, the Thermaltake Frio Advanced could be a huge success in the budget conscious enthusiast market. So, without further ado, let’s put the Frio Advanced through our barrage of demanding tests and see if it can handle our extreme 4.7GHz overclock test which only the best few coolers are able to complete.