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Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

We tested Megahalems Rev. B, a CPU cooler from Prolimatech with a tower design, six copper heatpipes and room for one or two 120 mm fans. Its appearence is great, but let’s see if its performance is great too.

Just like the Silverstone NT06-E we reviewed before, the Megahalems doesn’t come with a fan, and you must buy it separately. So, when comparing this coolers cost with other options, don’t forget to add the price of a good fan.

In our tests we used the Silverstone FM123 fan, the same used on NT06-E test. It is good to remember this cooler performance can vary depending on the fan you choose.

Megahalems box is made of cardboard with a plain look, with no transparent windows or any eye-catching detail.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 1: Box.

Inside the box we found the cooler, user manual, installation hardware and a tube of gray thermal compound.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 2: Box contents.

In the next few pages we will see the Megahalems Rev. B in detail.

[nextpage title=”Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B”]

The Megahalems Rev. B design is very peculiar because, besides being pratically a tower design cooler, it is actually made by two independent heatsinks.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 3: Front view.

In Figure 4 we can see the six copper heatpipes, with 6 mm diameter each. Note the base core is made almost only by the heatpipes, side by side.
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 4: Side view.

In Figure 5 we can see the top side of Megahalems B. We can see cleary the gap between the heatsinks. The top fin is not made of aluminum, but of stainless steel (according to the manufacturer this material was used in order to keep the shiny aspect longer).

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 5: Top view.

In Figure 6 we can see the cooler base, with a near mirrored finishing.
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 6: Base.

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

Megahalems Rev. B comes with only one holding system, supporting Intel sockets 775, 1156 and 1366 CPUs. Actually, the main difference between the first version to the revision B is the support to 1156 socket, as the earlier version fits only sockets 775 and 1366.

In Figure 7, you can see the installation hardware, and all those parts must be used, which makes the installation a little complicated. Note the four metal wire clips on the bottom of the picture, which holds one or two fans, besides the cooler comes with no fan at all.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 7: Installation hardware.

Before installing the cooler itself, you must install a frame in the motherboard, made by the backplate, screws, nuts and two aluminum tabs that stay on the component side of the motherboard. In order to install this, you must remove the motherboard from the case, unless it grants access to the solder side of the motherboard. In Figure 8, you can see this frame installed.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 8: Frame installed on the motherboard.

In Figure 9 we can see the cooler attached to the frame. It was a hard task to put it on place, since a third aluminum bar over the cooler base holds the cooler, and this bar is attached to the motherboard bars with two screws. The problem was those two screws didn’t easely pass through the holder holes, and the only way we menage to do this was usign brute force (a lot of brute force, actually).

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 9: Installed on motherboard.

In Figure 10, we can see Megahalems B with the Silverstone FM123 fan on place. Keep in mind our results are based on this fan and, with another fan, you can get a different performance.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. BFigure 10: Fan installed.

In Figure 11 we can see the cooler installed into the case. It is not the biggest cooler we have seen, but it is very tall. It did not interfered with any motherboard component, but the fan position can impossibilitate the use of a tall heatsink memory module on the first slot.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B CPU Cooler Review

Figure 11: Installed in the case.

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We are adopting the following methodology for 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. To measure the efficiency of the tested cooler, we need a processor that gets very hot. This CPU works by default at 3.0 GHz, but we o
verclocked 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 Prime95 with the "In-place Large FFTs" option, and three instances of the StressCPU program, all at the same time.

We also compared the reviewed cooler to the 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 the from the SpeedFan program, using 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 made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

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

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 the coolers shown on below tables. Each test ran with the CPU idle and the with the CPU fully loaded. On BigTyp 14Pro, TMG IA1, NH-U12P and ISGC-300 the tests were done with the fan at full speed and at minimum speed. The other coolers were connected directly to the motherboard and it controls the fan speed based on CPU load level and temperature on PWM models. ISGC-400, iCEAGE Prima Boss and Megahalems Rev. B were tested at minimum speed on idle test and at maximum speed on full load test.

CPU Idle
Cooler Room Temp. Noise Fan Speed Base Temp. Core Temp.
Intel stock 14 °C 44 dBA 1000 rpm 31 °C 42 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (min) 17 °C 47 dBA 880 rpm 29 °C 36 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (max) 17 °C 59 dBA 1500 rpm 26 °C 34 °C
Akasa Nero 18 °C 41 dBA 500 rpm 26 °C 35 °C
Cooler Master V10 14 °C 44 dBA 1200 rpm 21 °C 26 °C
TMG IA1 (max) 16 °C 47 dBA 1500 rpm 22 °C 30 °C
TMG IA1 (min) 16 °C 57 dBA 2250 rpm 21 °C 30 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme 16 °C 44 dBA 1200 rpm 21 °C 29 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-100 18 °C 44 dBA 1450 rpm 35 °C 49 °C
Noctua NH-U12P (low) 15 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 20 °C 30 °C
Noctua NH-U12P 15 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 20 °C 28 °C
Noctua NH-C12P 17 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 23 °C 28 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-200 21 °C 43 dBA 1100 rpm 31 °C 35 °C
Schythe Kabuto 22 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 29 °C 34 °C
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 20 °C 43 dBA 1500 rpm 32 °C 39 °C
ISGC-300 (min) 18 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 26 °C 30 °C
ISGC-300 (max) 18 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 24 °C 26 °C
SilverStone NT06-E 21 °C 66 dBA 2600 rpm 30 °C 41 °C
Zalman CNPS9700 NT 22 °C 48 dBA 1700 rpm 28 °C 35 °C
Scythe Mugen-2 17 °C 41 dBA 700 rpm 25 °C 30 °C
ISGC-400 (min) 17 °C 44 dBA 850 rpm 24 °C 30 °C
Cooler Master Vortex 752 20 °C 48 dBA 1700 rpm 32 °C 44 °C
iCEAGE Prima Boss (min) 22 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 29 °C 36 °C
Evercool Buffalo 17 °C 51 dBA 1850 rpm 22 °C 29 °C
Scythe Big Shuriken 20 °C 42 dBA 900 rpm 31 °C 39 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 21 °C 44 dBA 1700 rpm 30 °C 39 °C
Titan Skalli 20 °C 43 dBA 1200 rpm 27 °C 34 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B 21 °C 40 dBA 800 rpm 28 °C 32 °C

CPU Fully Loaded
Cooler Room Temp. Noise Fan Speed Base Temp. Core Temp.
Intel stock 14 °C 48 dBA 1740 rpm 42 °C 100 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (min) 17 °C 47 dBA 880 rpm 43 °C 77 °C
BigTyp 14Pro (max) 17 °C 59 dBA 1500 rpm 35 °C 70 °C
Akasa Nero 18 °C 48 dBA 1500 rpm 34 °C 68 °C
Cooler Master V10 14 °C 54 dBA 1900 rpm 24 °C 52 °C
TMG IA1 (max) 16 °C 47 dBA 1500 rpm 27 °C 63 °C
TMG IA1 (min) 16 °C 57 dBA 2250 rpm 25 °C 60 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme 16 °C 51 dBA 1900 rpm 24 °C 50 °C
Thermaltake ISG-100 18 °C 50 dBA 1800 rpm 58 °C 93 °C
Noctua NH-U12P (low) 15 °C 42 dBA 1000 rpm 28 °C 59 °C
Noctua NH-U12P 15 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 25 °C 54 °C
Noctua NH-C12P 17 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 37 °C 76 °C
Thermaltake ISGC-200 21 °C 48 dBA 1900 rpm 42 °C 68 °C
Scythe Kabuto 22 °C 47 dBA 1200 rpm 38 °C 63 °C
Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro 20 °C 51 dBA 2300 rpm 49 °C 85 °C
ISGC-300 (min) 18 °C 42 dBA 800 rpm 36 °C 64 °C
ISGC-300 (max) 18 °C 46 dBA 1400 rpm 31 °C 56 °C
SilverStone NT06-E 21 °C 66 dBA 2600 rpm 39 °C 96 °C
Zalman CNPS9700 NT 22 °C 56 dBA 2600 rpm 34 °C 63 °C
Scythe Mugen-2 17 °C 46 dBA 1300 rpm 28 °C 54 °C
ISGC-400 (max) 17 °C 47 dBA 1400 rpm 36 °C 69 °C
Cooler Master Vortex 752 20 °C 55 dBA 2300 rpm 48 °C 92 °C
iCEAGE Prima Boss (max) 22 °C 53 dBA 2000 rpm 35 °C 59 °C
Evercool Buffalo 17 °C 51 dBA 1850 rpm 32 °C 67 °C
Scythe Big Shuriken 20 °C 50 dBA 1500 rpm 51 °C 85 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 21 °C 53 dBA 2700 rpm 39 °C 66 °C
Titan Skalli 20 °C 47 dBA 1550 rpm 37 °C 69 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B 21 °C 61 dBA 2600 rpm 30 °C 51 °C

The next graph shows how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, in idle.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B 

The next graph gives you an idea on how many degrees Celsius the CPU core was hotter than room temperature during the tests, under full load.

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B 

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B main features are:

  • Application: Sockets 1366, 1156 and 775 processors.
  • Fins: Aluminum.
  • Base: Copper.
  • Heat-pipes: Six U-shape 6 mm copper heat-pipes.
  • Fan: 120 mm (not included).
  • Nominal fan speed: Not applicable.
  • Fan air flow: Not applicable.
  • Maximum power consumption: Not applicable.
  • Nominal noise level: Not applicable.
  • Weight: 1.75 lbs (790 g).
  • More information: https://www.prolimatech.com
  • Average price in the US*: USD 65.00

* Researched on www.frozencpu.com on the day this review was published. [nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B is an extreme performance cooler. Under our test conditions it performed better than all coolers we tested to date.

We must keep in mind that it does not come with a fan, and you must buy one. So, if you use a fan with lower airflow, the cooler can show lower performance. But taking into account that it performed greately even with the CPU idle (when the fan was on its lowest rotation speed), we can conclude it will probably show a great performance even with a slower (and quieter) fan. There is also the possibility to install two fans in order to maximize airflow.

One drawback on Megahalems Rev. B is its installation, very difficult. The part count is high and the installation procedure is complex, but the manual is clear and if you follow it step by step you will have no problems.

It looks nice and denotes quality, even though it is not too fancy or eye-catching.

The price is compatible
with a high-performance cooler, but keep in mind it is not inexpensive and you must still pay for a good fan. But, performing like it did, it has the right to be expensive.

Due to its exceptional performance, Prolimatech Megahalems Rev. B deserves the Hardware Secrets Golden Award seal.

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