Introduction

Thermaltake is releasing a new CPU cooler, called Jing, which has a tower design, five heatpipes, and two 120 fans. Check it out!

The Jing box is made of cardpaper, with no openings or transparent window.

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Figure 1: Packaging

In Figure 2, you can see the accessories that come with the Jing: manuals, installation hardware, and a tube of thermal compound. The hardware comes in a fancy little box where everyting has its own place in a foam pad, giving a very professional aspect to the product.

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Figure 2: Accessories

In Figure 3, you can see the Thermaltake Jing. It looks nice in light gray and green.

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Figure 3: The Thermaltake Jing

In the next pages, you will see this cooler in detail.

The Thermaltake Jing

In Figure 4, you see the front of the cooler. The green fan is mounted on a fancy-shaped gray frame.

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Figure 4: Front view

In Figure 5, you see the side of the cooler. Note that the fans are not identical. The front one pushes air into the heatsink, while the rear one pulls air from it. They spin on the same direction (when viewed from the side), and the blades of the first fan are mirrored in relation to the blades of the second fan. You will be able to see this better in Figure 9.

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Figure 5: Side view

In Figure 6, you can check the rear side of the cooler.

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Figure 6: Rear view

The Thermaltake Jing (Cont’d)

In Figure 7, you see the top of the cooler, which has a plastic green cap and a metal badge with the cooler logo.

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Figure 7: Top view

The fans are very easy to remove and reinstall. In Figure 8, you see the cooler without the fans.

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Figure 8: Cooler without the fans

In Figure 9, you can see the 120 mm fans, where you can see how the blades of the second fan are flipped compared to the blades of the first fan. They have three-pin connectors, meaning they don't have PWM automatic speed control. However, they have small potentiometers where you can manually adjust their rotation speeds.

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Figure 9: The fans

The base of the cooler, shown in Figure 10, is nickel-plated and have a nice mirror-like finishing.

Installation

In order to install the Jing, you need to remove the fans and attach two clips to the base of the cooler.

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Figure 11: Clips attached to the base

Then, you will need to install the parts shown in Figure 12 on your motherboard, making a frame where you can screw the cooler in (shown in Figure 13).

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Figure 12: Installation hardware for Intel CPUs

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Figure 13: Frame mounted on the motherboard

In Figure 14, you can see the Jing installed in our case, with the fans reinstalled.

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Figure 14: The Jing installed in our case

How We Tested

We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.

We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 (in this version, the software uses all available threads) with the "In-place Large FFTs" option.

We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.

Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn't interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core i7-860
• Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
• Memory: 4 GB A-Data AX3U1333GB2G8-2G (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-25 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
• Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
• Video resolution: 1680x1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool

Operating System Configuration

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Software Used

• Prime95
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 ^oC error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2 ^oC are considered irrelevant.

Our Tests

The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.

		Idle Processor			Processor at Full Load
Cooler	Room Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.
Intel stock (socket LGA1156)	14 °C	44 dBA	1700 rpm	46 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	90 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1	14 °C	47 dBA	2050 rpm	33 °C	56 dBA	2900 rpm	62 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme	14 °C	45 dBA	1400 rpm	27 °C	53 dBA	1950 rpm	51 °C
Thermaltake Silent 1156	14 °C	44 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	49 dBA	1750 rpm	69 °C
Noctua NH-D14	14 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	27 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	53 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Performa	14 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	28 °C	52 dBA	1950 rpm	54 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	50 °C
Thermaltake Frio	14 °C	46 dBA	1450 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	50 °C
Prolimatech Samuel 17	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	40 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	63 °C
Zalman CNPS8000A	18 °C	43 dBA	1400 rpm	39 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	70 °C
Spire TherMax Eclipse II	14 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	28 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	53 °C
Scythe Ninja3	17 °C	39 dBA	700 rpm	32 °C	55 dBA	1800 rpm	57 °C
Corsair A50	18 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	33 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	60 °C
Thermaltake Jing	18 °C	44 dBA	850/1150 rpm	34 °C	49 dBA	1300 rpm	60 °C

In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.

Main Specifications

The main features of the Thermaltake Jing CPU cooler include:

• Application: Socket LGA775, 1156, 1366, AM3, AM2+, and AM2 processors
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Copper
• Heat-pipes: Five 6-mm copper heat-pipes
• Fans: Two, 120 mm
• Nominal fan speed: 1,300 rpm
• Fan air flow: 42 cfm
• Maximum power consumption: 2.4 W
• Nominal noise level: 16 dBA
• Weight: 2 lbs (920 g)
• More information: http://www.thermaltakeusa.com
• Average price in the US*: USD 65.00

* Researched at Amazon.com on the day we published this review.

Conclusions

The Thermaltake Jing is a good cooler with great looks. The installation is relatively easy and you can remove the fans (to clean them) every time you want. The only weak point we found is its price tag: there are cheaper coolers on the market with the same performance level.

The Thermaltake Jing is a very well-built, great looking, good performing CPU cooler. Its box says "Silent by Design" and it really impressed us with the beautiful design and the low noise level while keeping a good cooling performance.