Thermaltake ISGC-100 CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

Today we tested Thermaltake ISGC-100, a "small" horizontal cooler with three heatpipes and a 92-mm fan with a special fan blade design to reduce noise. But will its cooling performance be comparable to the performance of other coolers we tested recently?

By the way, ISGC stands for "Inspiration of Silent Gaming Cooling". No, we also don’t think this expression makes any sense at all. Maybe it is another "Engrish" expression.

ISGC-100 is a relatively small cooler and can be installed in SFF cases. Its box (also small) can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Box.

Inside the box besides the cooler itself we found the user manual, a sticker for the computer case, a small white thermal compound bag and the hardware necessary to install the cooler on AMD or Intel (socket LGA775) processors.

Figure 2: Contents of the box.

The general aspect of ISGC-100 is good. It is much smaller than coolers we tested recently, but it has three 6-mm copper heatpipes, two of them folded and passing again into the heatsink, working as if there were five heatpipes.

Figure 3: Thermaltake ISGC-100.

[nextpage title=”Introduction (Cont’d)”]

Removing the fan we can see how the heatsink looks like, being smaller than the ones used on 120mm fan coolers obviously. The fan covers the entire heatsink. The heatpipes curves projects out a lot, which can cause some installation trouble if the heatpipes interfere with motherboard components.

Figure 6: Heatsink without fan.

The 92-mm fan has a classical frame, but the blades are white with an exclusive design. As you can see in Figure 7, its power connector is a four-pin miniature type, with PWM control pin, i.e., the motherboard controls the fan rotation speed.

Figure 7: Fan.

Figure 8: Fan blades detail.

The base is made of copper, with a very smooth finishing. In Figure 9, you can see a screw reflected on the base. You can also see how three heatpipes can look as five.

Figure 9: Mirror-finish base.

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

To install ISGC-100 on AMD processors (sockets AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939, 940 or 754) you just need to put the clip seen in Figure 10 over the base and then fasten it.

Figure 10: AMD clip.

To use it on Intel socket LGA775 CPUs more work is required. First you need to screw both clips shown in Figure 11 to the cooler base. Then you must remove the motherboard from the case (unless your case has a windows on the back side of the motherboard tray), put the cooler in place and screw the nuts on the back side of the motherboard, using the included rubber and silicon washers to avoid damage to the motherboard tracks.  

Figure 11: Socket LGA775 installation hardware.

Thermaltake ISGC-100 is a little bigger than Intel stock cooler, but very smaller than some coolers we reviewed lately, as you can see in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Installed on the motherboard.

As ISGC-100 is not a tall cooler
, you can install it on SFF cases. In Figure 13, you can see how it looks inside our case.

Figure 13: Installed in the case.

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We are adopting the following metodology on our CPU cooler reviews.

First, we chose the CPU with the highest TDP (Thermal Design Power) we had available, a Core 2 Extreme QX6850, which has a 130 W TDP. The choice for a CPU with a high TDP is obvious: as we want to measure how efficient is the tested cooler, we need a processor that gets very hot. This CPU works by default at 3.0 GHz, but we overclocked it to 3.33 GHz, in order to heat it as much as possible.

We took noise and temperature measurements with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to achieve 100% CPU load on the four processing cores we ran at the same time Prime95 in "In-place Large FFTs" option and three instances of StressCPU program.

We also compared the reviewed cooler to Intel stock cooler (with copper base), which comes with the processor we used, and also with some other coolers we have tested using the same methodology.

Temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer, with the sensor touching the base of the cooler, and also with the core temperature reading (given by the CPU thermal sensor) from SpeedFan program. For this measurement we used an arithmetic average of the four core temperature readings.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the video board cooler so it wouldn’t interfere with the results, but this measurement is only for comparative purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be done inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, what we do not have.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6850
• Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3L
• Memory: 2 GB Corsair XMS2 DHX TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX G (DDR2-800/PC2-6400 with timings 4-4-4-12), running at 800 MHz
• Hard drive: 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 (ST3500320AS, SATA-300, 7200 rpm, 32 MB buffer)
• Video card: PNY Verto Geforce 9600 GT
• Video resolution: 1680×1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply required: Seventeam ST-550P-AM

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed on FAT32 partition
• Service Pack 3
• Intel Inf driver version: 8.3.1.1009
• NVIDIA video driver version: 182.08

Software Used

• Prime95
• StressCPU
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 °C error margin, i.e., temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.

[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]

On the tables below you can see our results. We ran the same tests with Intel stock cooler, Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro, Akasa Nero, Cooler Master V10, Thermaltake TMG IA1, Zalman CNPS10X Extreme and Thermaltake ISGC-100. Each test was made with the CPU idle and the with the CPU fully loaded. On BigTyp 14Pro and TMG IA1, the tests were done with fan at full speed and at minimum speed. With Intel stock cooler, Akasa Nero, V10, Zalman CNPS10X Extreme and Thermaltake ISGC-100, the motherboard controls the fan speed based on CPU load level and temperature.

On the graph below you can see the temperature difference between the cooler base and the room temperature with the CPU idle and fully loaded. Values shown are in Celsius degrees. Remember that the lower the number the better is cooling performance.

On the next graph you can have an idea on how many Celsius degrees was CPU core hotter than room temperature during the tests.

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

Thermaltake ISGC-100 main features are:

• Application: Socket LGA775, AM3, AM2+, AM2 and 939 processors.
• Fins: Aluminum.
• Base: Copper.
• Heat-pipes: Three copper heat-pipes.
• Fan: 92 mm.
• Fan speed: from 600 to 1,600 rpm.
• Fan air flow: 37 cfm.
• Maximum power consumption: 0.96 W.
• Nominal noise level: above 17 dBA.
• Weight: 0,74 lbs (335 g).
• More information: https://www.thermaltakeusa.com
• Average price in the US*: USD 40.00

* Researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.