The most obvious and striking feature that gets your attention is of course that fan. Underneath you see that it's really a panaflo fan. Panaflo fans are known for being not only very quiet, but also for putting out very good airflow. Excellent air to noise ratio.

The side vents are not what any other fans have. At least that I'm aware of. They are suppose to assist in bringing in more air, while keeping the noise down. From Thermaltake: "Multi-directional air intake increases airflow while keeping the relative noise at minimal."

The heatsink is all copper, with the exception of the aluminum sheath. The thin fins are all soldered the the baseplate. The bottom is smooth, but could use a good lap job. The heatsink and sheath are designed so all the air from the fan does get to those thin fins. No airflow is lost as it is on some other heatsinks.

In testing the performance of the Silent Boost, to get idle temp I waited after a fresh boot for at least 30 minutes, did some net surfing. To get load temps I ran the prime95 cpu torture test for at least an hour. Room temp was maintained at 75 degrees fahrenheit and the side panel is closed.

• Chieftec case (2 80mm fans as intake, 2 80mm fans as exhaust (no side fan)
• Shuttle AN35N Ultra
• AMD 2500+ overclocked @ 3200+ (11x200)
• 2 512MB sticks of Mushkin pc3200 DDR
• BFG 5600U
• Fortissmo III
• Maxtor 160GB 7200
• WD 120GB 7200
• TV Card
• Coolmax 550W psu (3 fans)

I'll be comparing the Silent Boost against an SLK900A with a quiet 80MM NMB fan. It puts out airflow similar to the Silent Boost fan. Actually, it is rated 1 cfm less at 26.5, but big deal eh. That's close enough. All temps are in fahrenheit because you can see a more detailed difference.

*Below are the same results, but converted to CELSIUS. Since many prefer Celsius.:P

As Carson's ole sidekick use to say; "Well how 'bout that!". The Silent Boost heatsink and Fan are designed to be not only quiet, but also be a very good performer. And it works very well as you can see. Granted, with higher cfm fans the denseness of the SLK900A would certainly cool better, but at these quiet speeds the Silent Boost excels.

I'm still shaking my head at the results. I tried another install of the Silent Boost and put the SLK900A back on to be sure. The SLK900A has much more copper so it takes more airflow before the cooling really kicks in. The lighter Silent Boost heatsink can do so quicker. Plus it's obvious that that fan design works. And remember, the test results you see above are on an overclocked system.

• Cools well, even for overclocking
• It is quiet
• Easy to install
• 3-prong clip
• It isn't too heavy (no core crusher)
• Very unique fan, it must work
• Cleaned my dishes (just kidding)

• no 4-pin molex adapter included

A big winner here from Thermaltake, ain't no doubt. It's very easy to install by using a flathead screwdriver (try several out at first and choose the best-fitting one) , cools well and AND it really is quiet! Why have what sounds like a loud hair dryer in your sytem to try and keep that blazin' cpu cool when you don't have to.

Many thanks goes out to Thermaltake for making this review possible. Direct Link to the Silent Boost page.