It’s January. The start of a new year. All the possibilities that spring forth from it, all the missed opportunities from the last, and of course all the Boxing Day mop up sales. This brings me to my point. I recently purchased a Thermaltake Volcano7 from Bigfoot Computers because I desperately needed something to cool my CPU, but at acceptable noise levels. My Volcano 6cu+ was just too damn loud - my hamster frets every time I turn on my computer. The Volcano7 promises to deliver cooling when needed and tranquility when possible. All at a reasonable price. Let’s see if it delivers.
Package:
The first thing I noticed after I opened the brown package it was shipped in and cleared out the packing peanuts was that the box - by my standards - was really big. Not exactly HUGE, but by no means small. The box itself is a gradient light blue, with plaid stripes. It also has Chinese writing saying “Fire Mountain” or Volcano; understandable since it is made in Taiwan. Inside the box you should find a case badge with the inscription reading “Tt, performance cooled by thermaltake” (also found in their ram cooling kits), the Volcano7 unit and a three pin to four pin adapter, which by the way, the nice people at Thermaltake took the liberty of installing just to give us a hint as to what were supposed to do with it…
Hmm…
One of the first things I noticed was that the Volcano7’s fan unit had TWO different connectors. One was the three pin connector which had no Rpm output, the second a dedicated tachometer output. This enables you to use the more powerful Molex connector directly from the power supply without losing tachometer readout. The only other place I’ve seen this is the Swiftech line of coolers, with the stock Papst fan. An innovation I’m pleasantly surprised to see from a budget cooler company. One peeve I have though, is that they put a black thermal pad on the copper part of the heatsink instead of their usual “BERGQUIST 255U” thermal compound, which comes in a little plastic pouch which you’re free to apply it if you wish. This thermal pad caused a little bit of trouble as I wanted to remove it and use Arctic Alumina. My recommendation would be to freeze the heatsink, and “chafe” off the thermal pad instead of getting your fingers messy rubbing. The copper base could be flatter, it is a little rough around the edges and might benefit from some lapping. Here is a picture of the base:
