Thermalright AXP-100 Low Profile Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,339 words · ~6 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the AXP 100 from Thermalite. Now, you
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might think of Thermalite as like beastly coolers that are faking huge and
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per perform like awesome and stuff like
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the Silverero Extreme, which we actually took a look at in a review not that long
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ago where it actually was pretty darn
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close to an H100i in terms of the performance that we were able to squeeze
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out of this bad boy with 220 mm fans installed on it. So, you know,
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immaculate uh production, manufacturing. That's the
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word I was looking for. Uh just, you know, gorgeous designs, very shiny, very
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cool looking, but not everyone necessarily has enough room for a cooler
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like that. So, that's where the AXP 100 comes in. This is a lowprofile cooler,
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but built the way that Thermalite builds coolers. So, the mounting hardware alone
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weighs about 6 lb. And obviously I'm exaggerating a little bit, but
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Thermalite does such a good job of mounting hardware. Look at this stuff. I
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mean, it's built like it's actually
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designed for the motherboard to be like in a combat zone and the CPU cooler will
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not come off no matter what. And I'm going to need a knife to open this up.
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And there are a billion little pieces. But the good news is Thermal Write also
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does a pretty good job of documenting where all the little pieces go so that
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you shouldn't have too much trouble. I mean, here's what I want you to see more
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than anything else. Like, look at this hold down plate. Like, look at this
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thing. It's like, look at this. This is
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like solid metal. Look how thick it is.
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We'll do an HTC 8X size comparison
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because everyone knows how big these are. There you go. Hilarious, right? No
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one knows. Uh, but don't worry about it. It's basically as thick as the as the
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glass pieces on either side of an iPhone 4. I just know that from memory. I can't
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hold one up for you because I don't have it anymore. So, there's the back plate. Again, same thing. Super thick piece of
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metal. I'm not going to dwell on this for too long. Let's move along to the
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cooler itself. So, they include what looks like about a 90 mm fan, probably
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100 millimeter based on the name of the product, and in a military style themed
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color sort of finish. So, that's kind of interesting. So, this will look great in
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your Vengeance C70 or uh you know, other
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kind of, you know, military themed sort of build in like if you're doing a
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themed build, then that could be a good thing. Otherwise, you could get a different 100 millimeter fan. It's
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totally up to you. And there it is, the AXP 100. We're almost going to need like
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a phone size comparison for this. So, for the sake of just being a troll,
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here's an HTC 8X size comparison again.
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So, there's the thickness. So, this is an extremely lowprofile cooler that once
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you go ahead and install that 100 mm fan
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on, actually isn't much taller than a stock cooler. So, check this out. Here's
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an LG 1155 stock cooler. So, it's about
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that tall. Here is the AXP 100, which I
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can tell you just based on looking at it how much metal is in there. I mean, look
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at this thing. Will just destroy this stock cooler in terms of performance.
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It's a not a very dense fin arrangement. So, you can see here that they're quite
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loose, which is necessary when you have a slim lowprofile fan like this. This is
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a half uh I think this is probably what, like 15 ms thick. So, it's not as thick
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as a standard 25 mm fan. So, you're not able to generate as much pressure as
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easily. So, you need to make sure that it's able to push air through the cooler
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itself, but it still packs six heat pipes. Check that out. Six heat pipes
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running off the base and a very tight bend up to this cooler which is
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terminated with oh check that out. Nice little finishing touch. Little Thermal
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Wright logos on the end of each one of the heat pipe caps. It's absolutely
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beautiful. I mean it feels incredibly solid which I've come to expect again
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from Thermalite coolers. And no way.
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What are these? Are these heat pipe? They couldn't be. No, those can't be
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heat pipes. They're too small. But uh whatever. So, there's two little clips
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here that sort of make it more more rigid. So, I want to compare this to
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something like the uh Fantex lowprofile
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cooler. So, in terms of the actual profile of it, they're pretty similar.
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So, I think we can all say out of a stock cooler, a competing solution, and
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the AXP 100 which one makes the most
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sense for your sort of small form factor
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installation. Now, I did a build in a Lean Lee PCQ8,
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I believe is the case, and I ended up using an older SilX cooler of all
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things. I can tell you guys right now that I would definitely, if I could get
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the case open and actually access the CPU socket, because that's how tight it
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is, replace it with this in a second. Because what's great about a design like
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this is it's much broader, which is fine because as long as it's tall enough to
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get past the the RAM slots or if it doesn't go into the no zone on the CPU
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design manufacturer uh on the CPU design guidelines, then it's big enough that as
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long as you have a power supply over top of it, you could probably actually
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passively cool your CPU. Although, don't quote me on that. You might at least
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need like a like a cardboard shroud. You can build one yourself. Um, that was
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something that I tried to do with the one that I have, but the CPU cooler is not good enough. So, there you go. I I'm
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gonna do the obligatory finger shot on the bottom here. Thermal rate does such
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a good job of the uh the manufacturing on their I mean, look at this thing.
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Remember guys, again, the obligatory finger shot does not necessarily
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indicate how flat the surface is or how well the cooler will perform, but it's
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just the kind of care and attention that goes into the products. In fact, if I
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angled this just right, you could probably catch Diesel in his camera over
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there. No, he's giving me He's giving me the headshake. That either means it's
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not working or don't do it. Um, I think
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that pretty much covers it. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
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look at the AXP 100 from Thermalite. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech
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Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And I'm just
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gonna try and figure out why the heck they sent this fan because this doesn't
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seem to have anything to do with the AXP 100. But there you go. It's the TY41 fan
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from Thermalite. It has been unboxed as well. It has a sleeved cable and it is a
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140 mm fan that has a 120 mm clearance
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on this side by the look of things and 140 mm on this side and uses 120 mm
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mounting holes and big broad blades for
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looks like optimized pressure optimized fan. Don't forget to subscribe to Lest
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Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.