Thermaltake Jing CPU Cooler - A Stealthy Proposal
Thermaltake's latest CPU cooler is named after a Chinese character for 'silence'. Find out if this dual-fan multi-socket cooler lives up to its name.
The Silent One
To those who don't understand Chinese, Thermaltake's latest CPU cooler would seem to have a touch of the exotic orient, what with a stylized Chinese character prominently displayed on its packaging. Those who understand the language will know that the character, Jing, means "Silence" and well, it's very appropriate for a CPU cooler aiming to be as inaudible and discreet as possible. Thermaltake rates the noise output for this cooler at a mere 16 decibels (at the lower fan speed).
Thermaltake's latest CPU cooler features dual 120mm fans, copper heatpipes and comes with a Chinese name representing 'Silence'.
At first glance, the Jing appears typical of many third-party coolers, with dual 120mm fans to pull in cool air and push the warmer, resultant air to the exhaust at the back of your chassis. Despite its extensive use of plastic, from the bracket holding the aluminum fins to the blades on the fans, the Thermaltake Jing felt rather heavy, no doubt due to the five, 6mm thick copper heatpipes protruding from the nickel-plated copper base. In fact, all the fins, heatpipes and the base are nickel-plated.
Installation
The Jing is designed for both AMD and Intel processors and support a number of CPU sockets found on today's platforms, like LGA1366 and 1156, AM2+ and AM3. To support the different sockets, there are as usual different mounting mechanisms and users have to choose the right one for their CPU sockets. It's a standard practice for third-party coolers to ensure that it works on all platforms.
We liked how Thermaltake placed all the necessary accessories in a box, with the proper labels, instead of putting them in small plastic bags and letting users figure out which part is which. If you need further help identifying which components to choose for your particular socket, Thermaltake's installation guide is also rather decent. Before proceeding to the installation, we first had to remove the dual fans on each side of the cooler, since their bulk would have made it quite difficult to reach the mounting screws.
The best ever packaging we encountered for a CPU cooler.
As expected from a cooler that supports multiple sockets, one has to affix a back plate at the bottom of the socket in order to provide the right mounting holes for the cooler. Good thing our test chassis comes with the exposed bottom shown here.
After fitting the backplate, it's time to screw in the mounting brackets for the cooler. In this case, for the Intel LGA1366 socket, there are two separate pieces. As you can see here, they don't interfere with the CPU latch, so you can change a processor without removing the bracket.
After fixing the mounting bracket to the CPU socket area, we had to screw on both sides of the copper base to attach the two mounting screws for the cooler. While this was easy enough, we preferred not having o use a screwdriver at all, which unfortunately, isn't the case.
You snap the two fans into place with these plastic 'clips' but they can be a bit stiff initially when we were trying to remove the fans before the installation.
The two 120mm fans come with differently shaped blades, with the one on the left here meant to pull air in and the other shaped to exhaust the warm air on the other side of the cooler. Hence you shouldn't get the order wrong. Each fan has its own 3-pin power connector and a fan control knob, with a choice between Low and High fan speeds. The downside is that those with many existing system fans will find fitting two more 3-pin fan connectors on their motherboard a dilemma. We definitely prefer a single central power connector with just one fan speed control. There's really not much of a point to set the intake and exhaust fans at different fan speeds.
When installed, the cooler takes up quite a fair bit of space, both in terms of its height and its width. Those with smaller chassis should take note.
Overall, the installation process was mostly smooth and straightforward. While we didn't appreciate having to bring out the screwdriver at one stage and the dual fan controls and power connectors really should be consolidated into just one for convenience's sake, we had to say this was a relatively uneventful and hassle free installation.
Performance
We tested the Jing on our cooler test system, which included an Intel Core i7-965 processor on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. SPECviewperf 10 (four threads) and Prime95 (eight concurrent threads) were used for around 30 minutes each to derive the maximum temperature. Temperatures were recorded using Core Temp 0.99. The ambient, air-conditioned temperature in our lab is about 22 degrees Celsius. Our chassis is the Lian Li PC-P50R with three system fans running (top, bottom front and exhaust).
Frankly, with dual 120mm fans, we were expecting better performance than the results the Jing eventually produced. Firstly, the CPU temperatures were almost identical between the Low (800RPM) and the High (1300RPM); perhaps Thermaltake should have gone for a wider range of fan speeds. The Jing was slightly worse off than the Evercool Transformer 4, which has a similar dual fan setup. In comparison, the Cooler Master V6GT was significantly better than the Thermaltake and the Evercool in cooling the CPU.
One reason could be the relatively slow speed of the Jing, which tops out at 1300RPM compared to the 2200RPM on the Cooler Master. It does mean that the Jing does live up to its name and we couldn't really hear its fan over the drone of our other system fans. On the other hand, those intending to overclock their processors should perhaps consider another cooler with the option to crank up the fan speed.
Conclusion
The Thermaltake Jing does an adequate job for cooling your processor. It may not be the powerhouse cooler that overclockers require, but the silent operation earns it top marks from us. The US$49 price tag is reasonable for its versatility and relatively straightforward installation and barring the two separate fan controls that we disliked, it's easy to forget its presence entirely. So if your priority is to eliminate noise from your stock CPU cooler, the Jing has you covered.
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