Hi guys,



Today I bring you an exclusive review of a Prolimatech Megahalems CPU cooler.



The high end CPU cooler market has seen dominance of Thermalright for past few years. Their Ultra 120 Extreme has been the king of the coolers for 2 years now. Many companies created the hype that they have finally come up with TRUE killer, but have failed to deliver.



This particular heatsink comes from relatively unknown manufacturer Prolimatech which is just a year old company, but even before its official launch, it created some noise amongst the overclocking circles with some stunning results.



So personally I was excited to review this cooler.



Now without wasting too much time, lets straight move to the cooler itself.









[BREAK=Packaging and Contents]

Packaging and Contents





The cooler ships in a standard cardboard box. Everything is nicely packed inside and there was absolutely no damage on the cooler. All accessories are packed in separate plastic bags as well.



Package Contents



• Megahalems Cooler

• LGA 775 and LGA 1366 motherboard backplate

• Retention plates (3nos)

• Fan clips (1 set for 1 fan)

• Prolimatech thermal compound

• Screws, nuts and bolts

• Manual











Unfortunately no fan is bundled with this cooler.





[BREAK=The Heatsink]

The Heatsink









When you take the heatsink out of the box, the first thing you notice is the built quality.

It feels solid in hand; there are no obvious imperfections here.











The quality of the material used is much higher than what we are used to in past. The fins don't bend easily while you hand the cooler. This is definitely big improvement over likes of TRUE and Sunbeamtech core contact freezer where you can easily bend fins while handling the cooler.











The cooler itself is a tower design measuring 130 x 74 x 158.7mm. This is a six heatpipe cooler. Heatpipes are made up of copper and are nickel plated. This is not the HDT type cooler. The heatpipes pass through the nickel plated copper base.













This cooler has a unique design. This is basically a two part heatsink.

The heatpipes on either side pass through 45 fins forming two parts of the heatsink. The fins are placed 5 mm apart from each other and each fin in 0.5mm thick which gives cooler its solid feel. One thing different about this cooler is the way heatpipes make contact with the fins. There are no holes drilled into aluminium plates, but each section is made up of two sets of fins which make contact with the heatpiptes.















The base finish is excellent. It’s not perfectly flat but it slightly dips down at the edges. This is not the bad thing as the base is much larger than even the Core i7 IHS.











As you can see, the base impression shows that it made good contact with the IHS of the chip.



The cooler is definitely on heavier side at 790gms without weight of fan. But this is to be expected from modern high performance cooler.











Prolimatech have gone for a simple design. There is no fancy heatpipe arrangement, no angular fin design. Basically it’s a simple design with linear heatpipe arrangement. The critics would say that this is not the most efficient way of heatpipe arrangement, but what difference it makes in real world will be seen shortly.









Here you can see the grooves for the fan clips. You can attach two 120mm fans on this cooler. But unfortunately only 1 set of clips is provided and you have to purchase second set separately.





Overall I am impressed with the quality of finish and built quality. There are no sharp edges anywhere on the cooler. So say bye bye to finger cuts while operating inside the case for any reason.



[BREAK=Installation]

Installation



This cooler has one of the best mounting mechanisms I have seen till date. The motherboard backplate sits under the board. Then you have to screw in four bolts which secure plate to the motherboard. After that you have to attach two horizontal mount plates and secure them to the motherboard using included bolts.









This provides a firm and stable base for retention of the cooler. The vertical mounting plate then passes over the base and is secured to the two plates using two spring bolts.









This whole mechanism feels very solid and really takes away the usual painful efforts required to mount most tower heatsinks. The two final bolts are very easy to access and do not need any special effort.

The cooler feels nice and solid with no wobble or tilt after the mounting is done.

You can then add up to two fans to this cooler. Even the fan clips have no pointed edges.



[BREAK=Setup and Test methods]



Setup used for testing



• Intel i7 920

• Gigabyte X58 UD5

• 6GB OCZ DDR3 1600 CL7

• Tagan BZ1300 PSU

• XFX HD4890 1GB Graphics Card

• NZXT Tempest Cabinet

• Stock case fans

• Scythe Kaze 87cfm fan

• Noctua NH U12P CPU cooler

• Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme

• Sunbeamtech Core Contact Freezer





Note: I anted to test this cooler against the Xigmatek Thor CPU cooler, but unfortunately due to lack of time and also unavailability of that cooler before I completed this review made that impossible. I will mostly be coming up with the review of Thor at the later date and that time you will get the comparison numbers for the same.



How we tested



First I was only going for open air testing. But considering most people use their setups inside the cabinet, I purchased NZXT Tempest cabinet 3 days back and re ran the tests for all coolers once again.

The room temperature was maintained at around 25-26°C using air-conditioning unit. Each test was performed 3 times and average of the three reading was taken.

To measure maximum load temperature, I used Linx to stress the system and temperatures were taken approximately 10 minutes in the test loop. Idle temperatures were taken 10 mins after the Linx test was completed where system was allowed to cool down without any activity.

For in cabinet testing, I used all stock fans of tempest at maximum speed.



The motherboard fan control was disabled leaving all fans at maximum speeds.

Different fan setups were used on each cooler. Hopefully this will provide end user with lot more data.



Thermal compound used was Arctic Cooling MX2



That’s it, let’s move to actual test results

[BREAK=Open Air Testing]

Open Air Testing



For open air testing obviously whole setup was tested outside the cabinet on a bench table.

Here are the results.



4Ghz Single Fan









4Ghz Dual Fan









4.3Ghz Single Fan









4.3Ghz Dual Fan







As you can see, it does live upto its hype. On open air setup, beating TRUE by any margin in itself is an accomplishment.



Please note that Core contact freezer can’t be used in dual fan setup.



[BREAK=Closed Cabinet Testing]

Closed Cabinet Testing

For closed cabinet testing. The room temperature was maintained at same 25-26C. All the fans in the cabinet were working at full speed.

4Ghz Single Fan









4Ghz Dual Fan









4.3Ghz Single Fan









4.3Ghz Dual Fan









Again, even at 4.3Ghz Megahalems remains the best performing cooler.



[BREAK=Conclusion and Analysis]

Conclusion and Analysis



The cooler throws up some impressive results. Specially seeing TRUE beaten consistently is not something I expected. At 4Ghz, the results are very close between the Noctua, TRUE and Megahalems. But still Megahalems comes on top. And as CPU speed is cranked up, it performs even better.

The only drawback of the cooler is the noise levels. It’s definitely louder with same fan compared to rest of the coolers. But it’s a very small price to pay for its performance.



This cooler is not exactly cheap. Costing of Rs.3700 and having to invest extra into a good fan and additional clips takes the cost of ownership in excess of Rs.4000. In that regard, the Noctua is very good value for money. But then again, it’s not available in India.

It has been years since something really came out that outperformed TRUE. And this coming from a company which is just 1 year old is a big surprise. The people behind the company are experience, and they got the things right in their first commercial attempt at CPU cooling and that is really good to see.

At the end of the day, this proved to be best Air cooler money can buy at the moment. Internationally it is priced well, and if the same happens here, it will outsell TRUE.

If you are in market for a new CPU cooler, there is no point in getting TRUE anymore. Owners of TRUE can rest easy as it still holds its ground. But if you are migrating to LGA1366 platform, this is the heatsink to get.



Pros



• Great built quality

• No sharp edges

• Easy and good mounting

• Dual fan ready

• Amazing performance





Cons



• Cost

• Only 1 set of fan clips bundled

• No fan included.









Product Source: Prolimatech Meghalem CPU Cooler - Lynx Chandigarh Largest Electronic & Computer Superstore

Manufacturer Page: Prolimatech



Please Digg this Review Here : Prolimatech Megahalems CPU Cooler Review

Originally Posted by Shripad

I dont know if thermalright revised the Ultima 90 mechanism at later date, but the one which I bought for a machine build last year had regular X clamp like TRUE.

Very early version of ultima90i used the same scissors clip like TRUE.

Later ones were sold with the same mounting mechanism as in the IFX-14, along with the SI128-SE, HR-01 Plus.

First-time installation on a mobo is a bit lengthy but once done, cooler removal for cleaning or to change chips and remount is much simpler and faster requiring only 2 bolts and a single crossplate.

final installation is same as TR K8 bolt-thru kit.

The mounting is also good and much more secure iirc.

Originally Posted by apollyon

nice review as always shripad

iirc that mounting mechanism is same as ultima 90?

Not 'same', the word you were looking for is 'similar' Apo sir.



But requires far lesser parts unlike the Ultima90i mounting and is (almost) pretty much tool-less maybe.

Ultima90i has a lot of those nipple nuts/pillars, o-rings, screws and the final tightening of those spring-bolts needs use of a screw-driver iirc.

Originally Posted by VaRz

the only bad thing about this cooler is that u need to buy a fan along with it..

Not necessarily.

Imho it's a good thing not being charged for a fan as user can pick fan of choice as per requirement.