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Thermaltake Venus 12 Review
Product: Venus 12
Supplied by: Thermaltake
Total Price: $28.99 USD
Reviewed By: Kurt "TheVirus" Knudsen
Review Date: 12/25/04

Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

Click Image To Enlarge

Introduction:
Cooling the CPU is probably the most important thing you can do to a PC. This holds especially true if you want to overclock it at all. Without a decent cooler the CPU will get too hot and become very unstable. Not only that but having a better cooler keeps your room warmer in the Winter months.

CPU coolers are an ever advancing technology with a ton of competition. Thermaltake shows us their latest and greatest cooler for the high-end PCs. This unit fits the AMD64 and Opteron.

Thermaltake Venus 12 Review Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

Overview:
Thermaltake's Venus 12 is probably as good as it gets. It offers a lot of neat features and cools the CPU down extremely well. The only major downside is the noise level, which is always a factor in air cooling. The unit comes with 4 ways to control it. You can use the 3.5" control bus, a PCI control bus, straight up full throttle, or use a thermal sensor to detect the temp and adjust the speed accordingly.

The choice ones are the thermal sensor or some kind of rheobus control. Having it on full throttle is just too loud, even for my standards. The Venus 12 is also all copper so its heat flow is much higher than that of aluminum.

Installation:
Installing it is extremely easy. It uses a swing arm so you no longer have to use a screwdriver. All you do is place it on the chip and set the holders and then swing the arm and you're set. If you used the thermal sensor it is best to put it on the outer most part of the copper bottom because it could crush it or your CPU or the ZIF socket.

Thermaltake Venus 12 Review Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

The unit comes with all of the adapters and an easy to read instruction manual. If you want to use the thermal sensor it also comes with double sided thermal tape. It's pretty thin and extremely sticky so it'll hold it on there very well. I believe it's the same kind of tape they use in video RAM heatsinks.

Testing:
Testing this unit was simple. I used the original stock cooler to test the temps. The test system is as follows:

  • AMD64 3500+ Socket 939
  • Asus A8V Deluxe
Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

As you can see the temps dropped quite a bit. The ambient temperature in my room was about 70F. Ambient temperature plays a vital part in cooling a computer down. If the air around you is extremely hot you will not get as good efficiency as you would if you had colder air. It's always best to run your PC in an air conditioned room.

Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

The above chart is on stock speeds. Below is a chart of a 200MHz boost, from 2.2GHz to 2.4GHz.

Thermaltake Venus 12 Review

It's pretty obvious the stock cooler just doesn't cut it. To record the temps I used Asus' Asus Probe. This reads directly from their own hardware so the temps are accurate. These tests were performed with the fans on full blast. Turning the fan down to an almost noiseless wind would increase the temps by about 3 degrees Celsius. I'd say that's pretty good for having the fan on about 2500 RPMs.

Conclusion:
I'd say this is a must-have if you want to OC your AMD64. There are plenty of other coolers out there but I think this is one of the best. You simply can't go wrong with this cooler it does a fantastic job and offers a ton of features that other coolers don't have.

XtReMoDs 9/10

Pros Cons
  • Cools very well
  • All copper
  • Lots of features
  • No tools needed
  • Not too expensive
  • Loud fan
  • Heavy

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