At first Evercool HPK-10025EA did not impress us. It has a good construction quality but it resembles some basic low-performance heatpipe-based CPU coolers. The fact it comes in a plastic blister also helped to create a not-so-good first impression.

Its performance, however, was a pleasant surprise. Even though it did not perform as good as the best tower-shaped coolers we've reviewed so far, compared to small and low-profile coolers (which fit SFF cases) it performed very well.

If you consider it is not an expensive cooler, we have here a good option for the buyer looking for a good CPU cooler for use in an SFF case.

The greatest flaw in HPK-10025EA is its noise level, which sounds annoying in silent enviroments. Its fan has no PWM speed control pin and thus it works always at its maximum rotation, even with the CPU idle, when you do not need much airflow. So it is a good idea to connect it to a motherboard that controls the fan speed even with the fan has no PWM pin or to connect it to a fan controller, in order for you to find the best balance between performance and silence. Another problem is the fact it does not support socket 1156 nor AMD CPUs.

With a good performance for a slim cooler, low price and only one significant flaw, it deserves our Bronze Award. If you have an SFF case and you are looking for a high-performance cooler buying Evercool HPK-10025EA is a great deal.