Thermaltake TMG IA1 CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

Continuing our series of CPU cooler reviews, today we tested Thermaltake TMG IA1, which uses the now classical tower design with U-shaped heatpipes, using a fancy shape on the heatsink fins. Will this design be translated into higher performance? Check it out!

TMG IA1 box looks quite alike BigTyp 14Pro box, with a transparent window that allows you to see part of the cooler.

Figure 1: Box.

Inside the box we found the cooler itself, user manuals, installation hardware, a small bag of thermal paste and a sticker for your case.

Figure 2: Box contents.

The cooler is big and heavy. The fins are very firm and the general aspect is of a very well-made cooler.

Figure 3: Thermaltake TMG IA1.

TMG IA1 fan has 120 mm in diameter and is made of transparent plastic. In the base of the fan there are three blue LEDs. An interesting detail is the fact the fan has no frame, which is not good in most cases because the airflow tends to spread, but with this cooler this seems to be a good idea because the heatsink fins involve the fan.

Figure 4: Front view.

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

In Figure 5, you can see the top view of TMG IA1 and have an idea of the shape of the heatsink fins. At first look it seems like the front tabs are a good idea because, as we said on last page, these tabs "involve" the fan, but the rear shape seems to be of more an aesthetic effect than of a performance-increasing system.

Figure 5: Top view.

The power connector is a three-pin micro type, without the speed control pin (PWM). However, the fan speed can be adjusted through a little potentiometer attached to the fan. The cable from this potentiometer is very short and thus you cannot adjust the fan speed without opening the case. A pity.

Figure 6: Base, potentiometer and power connector.

Figure 7: Mirror-like base surface.

[nextpage title=”Installation”]

TMG IA1 comes with a clip that allows you to install it on AMD CPUs with socket AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939 and 754. With those processors installation is very simple: you only need to put the cooler over the CPU and fasten the clip on the motherboard retention mechanism.

Figure 8: Clip for AMD processors.

In order to use it with Intel socket LGA775 processors, however, you need to first attach the two clips shown in Figure 9 to the base of the cooler.

Figure 9: Clips for socket LGA775 processors.

After that, the retention mechanism is identical to the one used on Intel stock coolers. So, there is no need to remove your motherboard from the case in order to install TMG IA1.

Figure 10: Clips in place.

In Figure 11, you can see how the cooler looks like after installed. Besides its size, the installation was easy. The only detail was that we cut our hands on the heatsink fins when installing the memory modules, so watch out!

Figure 11: Installed in our case.

In Figure 12, you can see how the blue LEDs glow when the cooler is working.

Figure 12: LEDs glowing.

[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 the
rmal 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, BigTyp 14Pro, Akasa Nero, Cooler Master V10 and Thermaltake TMG IA1. Each test was made with the CPU idle and then with the CPU fully loaded. Keep in mind that with Thermaltake BigTyp 14Pro and TMG IA1 we ran the test with the fan at minimum speed and then at full rotation. With the other coolers 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 TMG IA1 main features are:

• Application: Socket LGA775, AM3, AM2+, AM2 and 939 processors.
• Fins: Aluminum.
• Base: Copper.
• Heat-pipes: Four U-shaped copper heatpipes.
• Fan: 120 mm.
• Fan speed: from 1,300 to 2,100 rpm.
• Fan air flow: 70,28 cfm maximum.
• Maximum power: 6.6 W
• Nominal noise level: above 20 dBA.
• Weight: 1.5 lbs (684 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.[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]