INTRODUCTION

   Although watercooling in general seems to be gaining ground thanks to the numerous custom watercooling kits and AIO solutions introduced/announced recently by quite a few manufacturers there's no denying that normal CPU Air Coolers still have much life left in them and to many people they are still the primary choice to keep their CPUs cool at a low cost. This is i guess the one thing that normal air coolers have that watercoolers don't so even if you just want to spend 20 bucks for a CPU Cooler chances are you will find at least one model in the market and it even might be a good one at that. However performance always comes at a cost and so the really powerful Air Coolers rival the AIO Liquid Coolers both in terms of cooling efficiency and price. Well the massive Frio Extreme by Thermaltake is one such CPU Air Cooler and we've been testing it for the past 3 days to see exactly how it fairs against the competition.

   The beginning of every myth and legend is about dreams and desire: the challenging, creative and combative features of Thermaltake Group create an exciting and fascinating user experience to share with everyone, while allowing users to enter a selfless state in terms of function and potential. Thermaltake Group's 3 main brands: Thermaltake, Tt eSPORTS and LUXA2 have been merchandising throughout the world, and have successfully established 6 business footholds in areas such as Europe, America, Oceania, Japan and China, with 95 regional distributors and over 4000 premium retailers. All product planning is orientated by observation of global PC peripheral market and understanding of consumer demands. Thermaltake creates direct contact opportunities with resellers and consumers by participating major global ICT exhibitions and trade shows every year, and develop innovative marketing strategies for the promotions of new products. Meanwhile, Thermaltake incorporates the composite marketing system by making branch offices and regional distributors both the distribution channel and technical support or service center to provide instant support; by maintaining close contact with end users, we manage to strengthen corporate competitiveness and create the momentum for the growth of accomplishments. With its outstanding wisdom and strength, Thermaltake Group is recruiting creative talents to build a cultural brand for the enjoyment of entertainment, e-Sports, technology and lifestyle!

   Unlike the previous Frio CPU Air Coolers the Frio Extreme is a dual heatsink model (sandwich) that comes packing two high speed 140mm fans in push & pull configuration much like the NH-D14 by Noctua, the Dark Rock Pro 2 by be quiet! and the Silver Arrow by Thermalright. Of course although dual heatsink designs are almost always superior to single heatsink solutions (something that always depends on the size and number of fins) in terms of cooling efficiency in the end their sheer size does create certain clearance issues with large mainboard heatsinks and tall memory modules so for that exact reason in this review we had to use the Kingston anniversary edition 16GB kit instead of the Predator one listed in the system specifications table. So although the Frio Extreme has been around for roughly a year now it's time to finally see what Thermaltake has to offer in the dual heatsink CPU Cooler market.