Our sample unit was most definitely intended to be hung off a rack, and displayed in a store, after all the formed plastic shell holds a brief fact sheet along with the cooler in full view. While the cooler at first is impressive, and the allusion to freezing cold hard to miss, a bit of confidence has to be lost on the poor English of the packaging. While the messages are in fact decipherable with a little bit of thought, we simply wonder why they didn't go the extra mile and just tell us that a radial heatsink design offers the best performance, and that extruded aluminum is better for heat dissipation over garden variety cold forged aluminum. In the package we received the cooler itself, a wee syringe of thermal paste, and a custom designed, easy to use backplate.
Moving from how it looks and what it was packaged into the actual cooler itself, we can see that this is no small beast - it sizes up at 92x92x63MM after all. The first impression you'll get of this heatsink is one of cool, as the snowflake grille atop a picturesque ice blue fan can only suggest one thing - chilling results. Moving further down the sink, we can indeed see that it's all one piece, but with a very disturbing twist - the base is essentially frosted, which will be terrible for thermal transfer. Our fears were confirmed when thermal grease looked embedded in the base in the sink after it had been removed for the first time. Granted, this frosting also applies to the fins and base of the cooler, allowing it to increase surface area, but it would have been nice to see Evercool put in at least some effort to make this smooth.
Returning to the top of the unit, we know that while this fan is rated for less then 27dBA, it puts out far more than this in operation - albeit not quite matching the whine of Intel's open design, but still having a fair bit of noise where there should be silence. Granted, this noise does come from the simple fact that a 92MM fan is moving 63CFM, so it's understandable. Perhaps the lone saving grace of this heatsink is the simple to use backplate. At first, we thought that the thumbscrews went into the metal rear plate and would undoubtedly fall behind the motherboard into oblivion. Thankfully, this was not the case. Upon removing the knurled springy nuts (a task for which a screwdriver will be required), we noted that the posts were attached to the base rather than the nuts themselves, allowing for the base plate to stay in place at all times, and allowing for the mounting of a few different heatsinks (albeit with a bit of adaption). Perhaps the reason that we're impressed with this part is the simple fact that it provides enough tension to make you worry about the health of your motherboard, but thanks to the threaded posts having a limit, it won't bend your motherboard at such high tensions. We just wish all manufacturers would adopt something like this, rather than a simple to use, yet vastly annoying to remove system of plastic push clips.
