Thermolab ITX30 Review

Published by Hiwa Pouri on 13.03.14
Page:
« 1 ... 3 4 5 (6)

Conclusion

General + -
Overall the Thermolab ITX30 is a very pleasant surprise. The cooler comes with an impressive level of manufacturing quality and also good performance for such a tiny cooler. This is definitely one of the smallest ITX cooler we have had for review and certainly liked the simplicity and manufacturing quality. Overall performance is good and noise levels are decent as well. They could be a little bit lower but as we said, for its size, you get great cooling performance. The cooler is bundled with a slim 80mm, 10mm tall, PWM fan, which is a little noisy at 12 Volt. Apart from that, we also did not like the lack of AMD compatibility.   - Low Profile Cooler Performance
- Quality
- PWM
 
- Socket compatibility
 
Installation   + -
Mounting is quite easy and practical. It is even easier than mounting the Intel stock cooler, as the bracket is pre-mounted, the mounting mechanism parts are solid and thermal paste is pre-applied, so it is practically ready to mount right out of the box.   - Basic mounting easy and practical
 
- Not compatible to AMD sockets
 
Performance   + -
Cooling performance of the Thermolab ITX30 is definitely good for its size as this is, after all, a 30mm tall cooler. It does a way better job than a lot of coolers we have seen in the past. Thermolab made a pure copper cooler witch is very rare and all parts are built according to high standards. When compared to the rest of the coolers we have tested so far, it even does a better job than some more expensive low-profile solutions. So far, Thermolab's ITX30 is one of the best performing low-profile coolers we've had on test in our lab.   - Cooling performances  
 
Noise Levels   + -
The overall noise levels are good and the Thermolab ITX30 is silent, except at 12V. Luckily this cooler is powerful enough to keep an HTPC or Steam Box system, which are usually not above 50W, at adequate temperatures. It can do a great job even when the fan is set to work at 7V, meaning noise level will not be an issue.   - Noise Level at 7V - Noise Level at 12V  
 
Recommendation / Price   + -
We can definitely recommend this cooler as it is a very good alternative to stock and entry-level coolers. The Thermolab ITX30 is a high quality cooler, but we could not find any price on Geizhals.eu. The only place we found it in stock, is on Ebay, where it is priced at 49 USD, which is quite a bit too much for this type of cooler but still in line with the level of quality. Hopefully, some retail/e-tail stores in Europe will get it soon so we will definitely keep an eye on it.   - Price - HTPC
- Mini-ITX Gaming
 
 
Rating
We gave the ITX30 from Thermolab 4 out of 5 stars.
 






Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications
Page 2 - Photo Gallery
Page 3 - Installation & Test Setup
Page 4 - Absolute Performance
Page 5 - PWM Performance
Page 6 - Conclusion






Navigate through the articles
Previous article Raijintek Themis EVO Review Thermolab Bada 2010 Review Next article
comments powered by Disqus

Thermolab ITX30 Review - Cooling > Aircooling - Reviews - ocaholic