INTRODUCTION

   CPU Cooling may have become far more complicated compared to what it was even just a decade ago but still regular CPU air coolers hold the largest piece of the market for one single reason, their great price/performance ratio which has yet to be beaten to date by the relatively new (always compared to air coolers) AIO liquid coolers. The good news is that CPU coolers undergo minor tweaks all the time and although not very ground breaking still the slight performance boost these offer is more than sufficient enough to keep regular air coolers competitive against AIO and even custom water cooling kits. The Macho Rev.B by our friends over at Thermalright which is here with us today has undergone such minor tweaks and we're here to see what kind of performance increase one can expect because of them.

   Thermalright is an elite design house that manufactures cooling products for computer components for the best quality and performance your money can buy. In 2002, AMD released its first generation Thunderbird CPU and since then we have been there every step of the way to counter high voltage and high heat with innovative design and highly acclaimed cooling solutions not only for AMD but for Intel as well. One of early well known solutions was the SK-6. With many positive and rave reviews under its belt Thermalright bolted to the top as the heat sink manufacturer mostly preferred by Overclockers and enthusiasts around the World. To this day, innovation never left our vocabulary as we keep coming up with leading edge designs staying ahead of the competition.

   The Macho Rev.B is basically a Macho Zero (without the black nickel plating) but with an 140mm fan strapped onto it which should help further boost the already excellent performance of the cooler quite a bit at the price of noise however. This was really a move we did expect from Thermalright since the Macho Zero performed incredibly well in our charts just by using the 140mm fan duct so offering the same heatsink but with a fan seemed like the logical next step. Of course to keep noise levels to a minimum Thermalright has used their brand new ultra-low-noise 1300RPM TY-147A 140mm PWM fan model (300RPM minimum compared to the 900RPM minimum of the regular TY-147) which although not really fast it does offer good airflow and pressure levels. So who wants to see how the Macho Zero performs when you strap a 140mm TY-147 PWM fan onto it?