Asus Triton 81

Verdict: Nowhere near as good as Asus' Core i7 motherboards.

While this cooler can fit a wide range of motherboards, we're focusing on how well it can cool an overclocked and overvolted Core i7 CPU. This is mainly due to the Intel reference HSF for Core i7 CPUs being rubbish for overclocking. Overvolting our Core i7-965 Extreme Edition by 0.1V and increasing its frequency from 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz by using a QPI of 150MHz made the CPU run at 93°C in a room with an ambient temperature of 27°C. This is a tiny overclock and an incredibly high CPU temperature, so you'll want a third-party cooler for your new Core i7 processor.

Like the Noctua cooler, the Triton 81 is a large heatsink with two fans attached in a push-pull configuration. It's quite pricey at a shade over £50. The 90mm fans are made of translucent plastic and are held on with metal mounts. Each fan has a blue LED and spins at 800-2,500rpm. As they're PWM fans, this rotational speed is automatically set in relation to the air temperature around the HSF.

The heatsink is X-shaped and has four 8mm copper heatpipes to draw heat away from the copper CPU contact plate to the aluminium fins. The X-shape means that placing a thumb on the heads of the push-pin attachments is tricky. The Triton 81 is 145mm tall and has 42mm of clearance between the heatsink and motherboard, so it shouldn't clash with most chipset and VRM coolers. It has arrows on top of the cooler to indicate which way the fans blow air, and the manual clearly states that this arrow should point towards the rear of your case.

At full speed, the fans are fairly loud, although the noise is a low-frequency whirring that isn't too annoying. The cooling power of the Triton 81 isn't spectacular, however, as our overclocked and overvolted Core i7 ran just 19°C cooler than it did with the reference Intel HSF, while the sub-£30 Akasa Nero reduced the CPU temperature by a further 2°C. At low fan speeds, the Triton 81 is quiet, though not as quiet as the claimed 18dBA 'normal operating volume' suggests.

Conclusion

The Asus Triton 81 looks good, but it's noisy when the two 90mm fans are running at full pelt. Unfortunately, the Triton 81 lacks the cooling power to justify this noise, and the cheaper Akasa Nero is quieter and cools better.