Intro

Ask for a good air cooling solution for your socket A rig and most people around here will say Thermalright. I used an SLK 800U for a long time with great satisfaction. They have been leaders in air cooling for many years now. The SI-97 I'm reviewing here is a heat pipe type cooler and very different in design from the SLK series I've come to know and love.

Package

On opening the box from CrazyPC I found a box with the Thermalright logo and, as this cooler doesn't come with a fan, an Enermax 92 mm adjustable speed fan. Oh, and a lot of pink peanuts too. Inside the box from Thermalright is a very well packaged cooler. It is wrapped in a plastic bag and completely encased in styrofoam which keeps it from moving even the slightest bit. Also packed within this box are all the necessary clips, a tube of thermal compound, a shim, two rubber strips and a pretty little sticker bearing the Thermalright logo in case you want to decorate the outside of your case. Hey, maybe the sticker will make you computer run faster just like all those stickers you see on those little cars with coffee cans for a muffler.

The Cooler

The cooler itself is silver in color but don't let that fool you. The base is made of nickel plated copper with four heat pipes running up to a fairly good size cooling surface of aluminum fins measuring approximately 96mm square. While not as large as the Zalman 7700 series of coolers it still may present some interference problems. While it is high enough above the motherboard to negate clearance problems there it still may give you some trouble. In my case I had to mod the shelf between the mobo tray and the power supply in my Chieftec Matrix case so I could install it. This was fine with me since I have wanted to do that since I got the case anyway.

Construction is very nice and it is solidly built. The dimensions of the cooler are 116mm long x 96mm wide x 75mm high without the fan which gives it a good size cooling area. It weighs in at a mere 280 grams (9.9 oz) again without a fan. The light weight makes this a good choice for a lan rig. The finish on the base is very nice and smooth thanks in part to the nickel plating.