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NOTICE: Before you start thinking about getting this, you must get or have a Thermaltake Volcano 7,8,9, or 11 heatsink.

What is it?

The Thermaltake Ducting Mod is a clear plastic tube that goes between your heatsink and CPU fan. The way it is designed is to place cooler air down onto the CPU heatsink. The cooler the air on the heatsink, the more performance you can get out of your CPU. It fits a standard CPU fan(80mm). It kind of acts like cold air intake that you would put on your car. You should angle the fan towards a place that isn’t cluttered and stays somewhat cooler. This is to get the most out of the product.

The Test Machine:

 :: Test System

Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum
AMD Athlon Xp 2000+
Thermaltake Volcano 9 cool mod heatsink
712mb ddr 2100
Western Digital 80gig HDD
Enermax case w/ window
4-80mm fans in the case
1-120mm blower fan

 :: Benchmarking Tools
Smart Guardian - Soyo

Soyo's Smart Guardian software - This came with the mobo drivers it seems to be extremely accurate. I compared it to a hand infrared temperature gage.

Installing:

This seemed to be very easy to do since there is no major stress on the CPU die, which means you don’t need to take off the heatsink to put this on. The package comes with all the hardware you need to install it, which means no running around ACE hardware looking for the right screws to fit!

Putting it to the Test:

Five minutes later, I had my system back together. When I was ready to boot up, I turned my system on and waited for windows to boot. About 8 sec. after I booted up, my system made this loud beeping noise meaning that my CPU was over heating and turned off.

I sat there and thought about why it was doing this. After moving some things around inside I noticed my power cable, which goes from my power supply to my motherboard, was pushing down on the heatsink. This means my heatsink was being pushed off the CPU die and wasn’t making a good, solid contact with the CPU die. After moving the thick cable, my system booted up just fine.


First reactions:

One of the major things I did notice from the beginning was that my CPU fan sounded a lot quieter. Which is a major plus, since my system sits like 3 feet from my bed.

The Numbers:

 :: DATA

Stock at idle (5273rpm) 38°C
Stock load on cpu(5273rpm) 45°C
Ducting Mod idle(5273rpm) 31°C
Ducting Mod with cpu load(5273rpm) 38°C

*This is with it being 72° F in the room during testing

The bits and pieces:

As you can tell from the numbers atop, it does make quite a bit of a difference in how cool your CPU stays. The major thing that I really like was that it made the fan a lot quieter.

In the end:

If you own a Volcano 7, 8, 9, or 11 heatsink I highly recommend on getting this for it. Not only does it do a good job lowering the temperature, but it also looks really cool in the case!

ARTICLE PUBLISHED: 6-25-03