INTRODUCTION

   Although technology never stays still due to a variety of reasons such as practicality, ease of use and cost a large percentage of the consumer base keeps using "older" products. Take electrical cars for example, they've been around for many years now but due to their somewhat high prices and in some cases less than great practicality (unlike diesel and gasoline cars you can't stop at a gas station and recharge their batteries inside just 5 minutes) the largest percentage of people don't "seem" to care much about them (at least for now). Something similar applies for CPU cooling so although AIO (all in one) liquid coolers and custom water cooling kits offer higher cooling efficiency due to their higher cost, space requirements (some people don't own cases with 240mm+ mounting areas) and lengthier installation many people still opt for the "classic" CPU air coolers. Thermalright continues to design and produce some of the best CPU air coolers in the market and today we'll be testing their latest TRUE Spirit 140 Direct model.

   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 TRUE Spirit 140 Direct is the successor to the award winning TRUE Spirit 140 BW Rev.A air cooler (one of their zero-clearance models for both the RAM modules and top PCI-E slot) so yes once again Thermalright chose to improve an already proven product. However the TRUE Spirit 140 Direct has many differences with the BW Rev.A model the most distinctive of which is its H.D.T base (heatpipe direct touch) which allows the heatpipes to come in contact directly with the CPU cover (unlike regular models which feature a copper base between the heatpipes and the CPU cover). Unfortunately although this should indeed help the cooling efficiency of this model Thermalright decided to decrease the total surface of the cooler to give it a higher compatibility with PC cases (according to Thermalright the Direct model fits in some cases where the BW Rev.A could not). So although the BW Rev.A was 165.15mm tall, 155mm long, 53.4mm wide and had a weight of 610g the new Direct model is 161.48mm tall, 140mm long, 42mm wide and weighs 650g (this difference in weight is due to the newly designed mounting bracket). The new Direct model also features a total of five 6mm all-copper nickel plated heatpipes as opposed to the six 6mm all-copper nickel-plated heatpipes featured in the BW Rev.A model. Finally Thermalright used the same TY-140 black 140mm PWM fan with both models (1300RPM/73.6CFM/21dBA) which is one of the most inaudible fans we've ever come across.