Today for review I've got the new Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU cooler. This cooler is small in size, and it's actually compatible with both LGA775 and 1155/1156 sockets so you'll be able to use it on that new upgrade you're planning on doing. The Alpine Pro 11 is a black style cooler, meaning it's a solid block of aluminum, no fancy heatpipes, this is old-school style cooling at its finest. I've put it up against the stock Intel cooler on my C2Q6600 CPU for comparison and found it's a decent upgrade over the stock cooling solution. It's small size make it great if you're short on room in your case, and it's silent as well, so it might make a nice cooler for an HTPC setup. Read on...

Product Name: Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: Arctic Cooling

Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

Alpine 11 Pro

Ultra Quiet Coolers for Intel Socket 1155/1156

The Intel Core i5 for socket 1156 is expected to be released in Q3. Multi-compatible with both the new sockets and 775, this new Alpine series is definitely a perfect choice for those who would like to go for a future-proof cooler.

Designed for silent-enthusiasts and system builders – Alpine 11 Pro

Main features:

-Ultra quiet 92mm PWM fan with low noise impeller

-Optimized heatsink efficient heat dissipation

-Patented fan holder eliminates the buzzing sounds

-Patented vibration absorption

-Pre-applied MX-2

-Easy installation with push pins

The Alpine 11 Pro is for users who look for an extremely quiet, high performance and easy-to-install cooling solution.

The Alpine 11 Pro features a more sophisticated acoustic design than the stock cooler. Thanks to the patented vibration absorption and fan holder, the cooler is barely audible – only 0.4 Sone at 2,000 rpm – a standard that the stock cooler cannot compete. With a 92mm PWM fan and a bigger heatsink design, the maximum cooling capacity of the Alpine 11 Pro achieves 95 Watts.

Moreover, the unique mounting system is very user-friendly and provides an absolutely transport safe solution. The cooler is fastened by screws, no back plate is necessary nor has the mainboard to be disassembled. The whole installation can be done in less than a minute. This is a totally peace of mind solution for Intel users.

Application:

-Intel Socket 1156, 775

-Up to 95 Watts

MSRP (excl. VAT):

-9,90 € / US$ 13.90

Specs:

Heatsink: 105.3 L x 113.4 W x 85H mm

Fan: 92mm x 1

Fan speed: 500 -2000 RPM (Controlled by PWM)

Air flow: 36.7CFM / 62.2 m3/h

Maximum Cooling Capacity: 95 Watts

Weight: 428g

Warranty: 6 year

A Better Look at Things:

The first thing we look at in any review is the packaging, and with the Alpine Pro 11 we've got the basic Arctic Cooling style, with information and pictures on the box.

Inside we find the cooler, instructions sheet, and a bag with an AC sticker along with the fasteners from the mounting bracket. These fasteners are either pieces of plastic, four are black and four are an off-white in color. The bracket gets set on the board over the mounting holes, the white pins have bottoms that expand and a slot in the top. The black pins are made to fit inside of the white mounts, when pushed in they force the bottoms of the white pins to expand and secure the bracket to your motherboard. It sound like a lot, but it's actually a very easy mounting system.

The cooler comes with the bracket already installed, it's held on with two screws on each side of the fan. The heatsink part of the cooler is aluminum, with a plastic fan shroud on top. The fan isn't actually attached to the cooler, it's part of the mounting system, it essentially pulls the cooler down onto the CPU when the screws are turned.

The Alpin 11 pro comes pre-applied with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound to make you life a bit easier. The base of the cooler isn't exactly finished, but it appears flat.

Installation, Testing and Comparison:

The mounting bracket is already installed on the cooler when it arrives, so you've got to remove it from the cooler by removing the two screws on each side, then you can install the bracket onto your motherboard. Once thing nice about this cooler is that you won't need to remove the motherboard from the case for installation, the mounting system pushed in from the front.

Here it is installed on my motherboard on top of an Intel Q6600 CPU, the cooler comes very close to the Gigabyte heatsink, if either the heatsink of the cooler were a hair larger it would not have fit. A lot of motherboard these days use large heatsink for the chipset, so this will have to be taken into account before thinking of buying this cooler. The Alpine 11 Pro is a small cooler in height, but it's fat and covers quite a bit of the area around the CPU socket.

For testing I ran two instances of Orthos Stress Prime to be sure full, 100%, load was on the CPU. You have to remember one thing, it's not ever likely that average person will be running a quad core CPU at 100% for any real amount of time, so this test is the extreme of things really.

Ambient room temperature during the testing was 23.1C (+/- .3C).

I used CoreTemp to monitor and log the CPU temperatures, which were then averaged out to get the results shown in the chart below.

It should be noted that the Xigmatek SD964 HDT CPU Cooler I used for this comparison had Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound on it, the same as the Alpine 11 Pro does. The stock Intel cooler actually was never used until now, so it had the Intel thermal compound on it, it was one from another Quad Core CPU that I never installed.

I knew the Xigmatek would beat out both of the coolers in terms of cooling abilities, but I put it in for a comparison between heatpipes and block style coolers.

The Alpine 11 pro does an admirable job of cooling when compared to the Intel Stock cooler, so it would certainly be an upgrade from it. Another big difference is the sound, the Intel Cooler, when under loud has a fan that almost makes a buzzing sound, it is rather loud and can be a bit annoying, on the other hand the Alpine 11 Pro fan is virtually silent.

The cooling ability compared to the stock cooler is very good, but compared to a heatpipe solution it's not that great as you can see, but we knew that was going to be the case already, heatpipes have proven themselves to be very efficient cooling products.

The Alpine 11 Pro is silent, I could not hear the fan over the rest of the system even when under load for long periods of time, which is a very nice feature.

The Apline 11 Pro is also small, at least in size, so it would make for a good CPU to install in cases where space is limited.

At the end of the review I've got 'Pre-applied Thermal Compound' listed under both the Pros and Cons, and I feel I should clarify that. The idea of pre-applying thermal compound is a good one in theory, sure it's nice to have the correct amount already applied, makes life a bit easier, but that also means you can basically install it only once. It would be nice is a small amount of extra thermal compound was included so you could possibly install it again if need be.

Summary and Comments:

The Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro cooler is a nice upgrade over the stock Intel cooler, if you're looking for a way to lower your temps and lower the volume of your system then this would be the way to go. The Alpine 11 Pro is also small in size making it a great choice for small cases or even an HTPC setup.

DragonSteelMods gives the Alpine 11 Pro a 4.5 out of 5 score.

Pros:

+Nicely made

+Silent

+decent cooling

+Small size

+Pre-applied thermal compound

Cons:

-May not fit on all motherboards

-Not the best cooling ability overall

-Pre-applied thermal compound

I would like to thank Arctic Cooling for the chance to review the Alpine 11 Pro and for their continued support of DSM.

review# 606

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