Thermalright's Upcoming Threadripper Air Cooler - Silver Arrow TR4

FrgMstr

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Thermalright, which has been one of our favorite companies to produce CPU air coolers for years now, is teasing us with its new Silver Arrow TR4, which you might have guessed is for AMD's Threadripper CPUs. A mid-mounted PWM fan and eight 6mm heatpipes lay at the heart of the HSF, and Thermalright is telling us that the cooler is capable of dissipating 320 watts. MSRP will be $80. We decided to hold off a bit for extending our Threadripper cooling reviews till we get the new 2990X in-house for testing. I would expect to see that quite soon.

Check out the pics.

More power, less size. By mounting the TY 143 PWM-fan centrally between the two cooling towers, Thermalright manages to maximise the cooling capacity while minimising the space requirements of the cooler. With unrestricted access to the RAM and the upper PCIe slot, it also does not protrude beyond the standard ATX motherboards.
 
I always liked Thermalright's coolers. This one should give the lower-end Liqtech coolers a good run and spank most of the Asetek-based liquid coolers out there. Not sure it will handle the heat of a 2990X at full roar though.
 
For a second I thought you said "ThermalTake" and the first thought that came to my mind was "They're still around?!"
 
Wow. This is the first cooler I've seen from them in 5+ years.

Other than a new mounting kit, I wonder how it's different from their original Silver Arrow? The original is almost 10 years old now.

I really hope you guys review it. Their stuff rarely gets reviewed by any decent websites anymore (mainly because they have nothing new), and the original Silver Arrow was the inspiration for all the other Dual Tower coolers. They used to be the coolers by which all other's were measured. They helped popularize all copper coolers, nickel plating, and the tower cooler design in general. Then sometime around 2008 they peaked when the first Silver Arrow was released, AMD stagnated development for several years, and Intel also kept with the same mounting pattern for all their consumer level sockets.

Years after that, Noctua hit the scene with their dual tower cooler NH-D14, then the upgraded NH-D15 but by that time Thermalright was just releasing new mounting kits for their old stuff. The other issue came with the exploding popularity of the AIO watercoolers. I think I only ever found 1 review that pitted a Silver Arrow vs Noctua NH-D14 and they were within a degree of each other. The Silver Arrow possibly has a slight edge with 2 additional heatpipes and a slightly larger fan. Where Thermalright always lost points was overall cost and availability. I know at one point I couldn't find their stuff on Amazon or Newegg unlike years past.

What I would like to see:
Silver Arrow TR4 vs current best dual tower (Noctua or Other) vs AIO Watercooler with 280 radiator (2x140mm). I'd also love to see the test done in stock config, and then at least once with all the cooler's with all optional fans mounted (using same make/model fan on all coolers). The Silver Arrow and Noctua's have dual fan mount options.
 
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Thermalright's coolers and fans are great.


I'm running a TY-143 as a side fan atm, actually. It's old, but it's great: silent when spun down, good airflow at normal speeds (even through a carbon filter), and it turns into a leaf-blower at max PWM.
 
My first custom heatsink was a Thermalright. The SK-6 for the Athlon T-bird if memory serves correct.
 
I have the original Silver Arrow cooling my Intel 2700k at 4.5 GHz right now. I had actually bought a DH-14, but it was concave or something and wouldn't mount well. I returned it and got the Silver Arrow. I actually switched to a custom loop for a while, but when my pump/reservoir combo died, I got a warranty replacement and just sold the whole thing. Looking forward to how this new one works.
 
Holy smokes didn't realize they were sitll around! Use to buy their products all the time!
 
I still have one running an Opteron 165 fanless in my HTPC box.
Nice! I still have one laying around somewhere in the attic... lost all the mounting hardware so not useful anymore but still keep it for nostalgia...
 
I've owned Thermalright coolers in the past and they've always been high quality. I now have a Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT on my 1800x and it's an absolute brick of a heatsink.. it's by far the largest and most well-designed heatsink I've ever owned. It manages to be as large as it is and mount completely clear of all of the RAM slots allowing for the tallest RAM around.

Also the design is superior, in my case, because the placement/direction of the heatpipes and fins actually lifts the entire cooling apparatus significantly closer to the exhaust port on my case allowing the exhaust fan to draw air over the CPU as if it were part of the CPU cooler.
 
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