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Cooler Master Jet7 CPU Cooler
Introduction
To my surprise, it appears that Cooler Master has built what I assume to be the successor to it's famous aero line of coolers. Building upon its great success of the aero 7+ with its blower technology, Cooler Master has produced what appears to be an Aero 7 with style. I am all for style, but we will have to see if this new stylized cooler can compete with its older, proven counterpart.   First Looks The packaging of the Jet 7 was very easy to open. The package contents include the Jet 7 cooler, a small package of thermal paste, screws, 3 ½ " drive mount, standard PCI slot mount, case badge, and an instruction booklet; overall pretty standard stuff. The bottom of the heatsink was about as well lapped as the Aero 7+. I imagine they are probably both manufactured in similar fashions. I did notice that the interface between the blower assembly and the heatsink appeared to be bowed. I am uncertain if this is a design characteristic or if the assembly was just poorly produced, as it showed up on both sides. Further inspection of the Cooler Master website reveals this "feature" as part of the product. This just seems stupid to me, but then again, I am not a cooling engineer.    The heatsink portion of the Jet 7 is made with a copper base with aluminum fins. This is a standard setup that has shown up many a time on other coolers. I thought the construction of the cooler looked hurried and a bit lacking in the fit and finish department. Here is a hint: spend more time on the overall quality of the product rather than the eye candy.   Speaking of eye candy, this cooler blatantly flaunts it. As I alluded to before, it looks just like a jet engine! It even has a little red LED light in the "exhaust" port to carry the look that one step further. A white LED light on the opposite side flashes constantly for some unknown purpose. Personally I think it was there just to annoy me, but I haven't any proof of that.   So basically I am not very fond of the construction of this cooler, as is apparent from my previous remarks. I also dislike the flashing white light. But this coolers sole purpose in life is to cool my CPU, not to get strapped onto the wing of a 747, which just wouldn't be safe. Just to make things clear, I would strap a 2x4 to my CPU if I thought it would cool it. Damn the looks! Installation (Damn You A7N8X!) I am done beating this cooler up over looks, let's just install it and see if it can compete with my current favorite, the Aero 7+. First I shall read the instructions. Second, I shall skip the first step and throw away the instructions because they are totally useless, unless you want to know the words for "socket lug" in 9 different languages. I removed the fan assembly from the heatsink to give myself some extra breathing room. The fan assembly takes up quite a lot of room; so removing it makes the heatsink much easier to maneuver into place. The clip that attaches the heatsink to the socket assembly utilizes all three "socket lugs," which more evenly distributes the pressure of the heatsink. It will also make it a little harder to install. I will be using arctic silver for the interface between the chip and the cooler. Now, in theory, installing the heatsink is a very straightforward and easy process. It usually requires a little bit of elbow grease to get the clip on, but nothing too hard!.unless you own an Asus A7N8X board. Never before have I wanted to rip off capacitors and send them flying. I have seen some poorly placed parts on a motherboard before, but this takes the cake. They give you just enough room to make you think it will be an easy install, but they lie, all lies I tell you. Pure lies! This is when a small screwdriver and some luck come into play. If you can get the first clip onto those tabs without breaking anything or gouging your board, you are home free. The other side of the clip just requires the usual wrestling of the clip to attach it. It does help to either remove the whole motherboard for this operation or to remove the power supply to provide the required hand room. Once the heatsink was on and attached, I just screwed the fan back on and hooked everything up (power, rheostat, and speed monitor). Now is a good time to orient the fan in the direction of your choosing. Had I not removed the fan before installation, the "exhaust" port of the Jet 7 would have been facing the power supply. I decided to change the direction to face the rear of the case instead. I may not care about style, but if it shows up, I will use it.   The Jet 7 came with both a PCI slot panel and a 3 ½ bay mount for the speed control. I decided to go with the PCI mount because the 3 ½ bay mount was not long enough for my test case. I am using an Enermax case with stealthed drive bays. This causes the front panel to protrude out much further than the standard 1 inch the bay mount was sized at. This might not be a problem in a lot of other cases, but for me it was a hassle. I would have liked to see the front mounting plate at least two inches in length. Testing Now that everything is put together and running, let's fire this thing up and see how it works. First I let the thermal paste burn in for two days. To provide the heat, I used my trusty Barton 2500+ overclocked (200x11.5). Heat production is not a problem for this chip. Will this new stylized cooler beat the old dependable aero 7+? Come back tomorrow for another episode of "As the Blower Turns". Just kidding! Here are the results...
As you can see from the graph above, the new Jet 7 cannot fully compete with its predecessor, the Aero 7+. This cooler just can't get the heat away from the chip fast enough. Under full load, with a room temperature of 20° C (68° F), the chip stayed around 46° C. As the room temperature increased to 22.2° C (72° F), the chip began to heat to 50° C. The aero 7+ did not have any problem with this kind of external heat. In fact, it was able to keep the chip at an acceptable 46° C, even as the ambient temperatures rose to the 80's. As a side note, when I installed the Aero 7+ back onto the chip, even with new thermal grease and no "burn-in" period, it had no problems keeping the temperature at or below 46° C. From my testing I found the Jet 7 to be a less efficient CPU cooler than the Aero 7+. I believe that the fault lies in the heatsink, rather than the blower placed on top of it. The aero 7+ is made entirely out of copper, while the Jet 7 is a copper base with attached aluminum fins. The Aero 7+ is also a much larger cooler in overall size than the Jet 7. I believe these are the things that make the Aero 7+ a superior cooler.   Conclusion So now you have heard my two cents, but that still leaves the final question to be answered: Is this the cooler for you? The answer is, it depends. This cooler should adequately cool a stock processor with good internal ventilation. If you want to seriously overclock your chip or your ventilation leaves something to be desired, then you would be better off with the Aero 7+. The Aero 7+ will cool the chip better and with slightly less noise. What the aero 7+ does not have is the stylish looks of the Jet 7. In this department the Jet 7 is king. To date, I have not seen anything that can match the Jet 7 in appearance. Everything else in a case these days is modded, why not the heatsink fan? I must hand it to Cooler Master for designing such an original cooler. I think that if they would just upgrade the heatsink on the Jet 7, this product would be unstoppable! Pros Style can not even begin to describe this cooler External Fan control On the lowest setting, you can barely hear it Did I mention style? Actually looks like an engine off of a jet (including exhaust) Cons Does not cool as well as it looks Louder than the Aero 7+ More expensive than better solutions 3 ½ bay mount was too short Flashing white LED (It annoyed me for some reason) Add Comment
7 User Comments 1 - Posted by
A Person
on November 13, 2003 - 2:29 am Hmm, let me think... aluminum heatsink and a higher price. I think I'll be sticking with my Aero 7+ 2 - Posted by
caniswolfie
on November 13, 2003 - 10:01 am I seem to remember people talking about the hybrid heatsinks with aluminum and copper. The problem with all copper is that is accepts heat very easily but that means it makes it difficult to cool down effectively. So they use the copper over the core to spread out the heat and then aluminum to catch the heat from the copper and be able to lose the heat to the fan much more easily. I could be completely wrong about this, but I think that was the rationale. 3 - Posted by
handrail
on November 13, 2003 - 10:43 am you are right on there Wolfie. i find that the copper cored/aluminum finned heat sinks work well...if they are of good quality. the vantec aeroflow (http://www.thetechlounge.com/review.php?REVIEWDIR=...)is a good example of this. it does a good job of keeping up with the aero 7+, my vantec acutally works as well as and sometimes better than rich's aero 7+ in my machine with the same chip and mobo. but his case is different . O/C'd barton 2500 never goes above 43C under load in my case...190 fsb, 11x mult. in my opinion, the vantec aeroflow cu/al heat sink is one of the best cu/al sinks on the market. if you can't go all copper, it's a good alternative. plus it's smaller than the aero 7+, so it's easier to install on the A7N8X. i had a coolermaster copper cored aluminum sink once, work moderately well, but not as well at the vantec version with the pass-thru fins. i love the aero7+ though too. but i can't see spending over $40 on the jet 7. oh, and btw, the jet 4, the P4 version comes with an all copper base...someone explain that one too me. i would figure that the AMD version would need better heat transfer. go figure. 4 - Posted by
caniswolfie
on November 13, 2003 - 12:33 pm Even looking at the stats given on coolermaster's website. They seem to be almost the same (a little more cfm for the jet, 20 v 22) and the difference in heatsink. I think they went a little overboard on the whole "Ooo Shiny" and forgot to make the cooler better. My Aero 7+ has a hard time fitting on the mainboard I've got now, I'd hate to see the Jet get on there. Oh well. I guess I'll wait and see if they come out with something much better. 5 - Posted by
Rich
on November 13, 2003 - 2:10 pm Interestingly enough, the Jet7 appears to run a bit higher in the RPM range than the Aero 7+. I think all the extra plastic actually retards incoming airflow thus reducing its effeciency. I think I will stick to the Aero 7+.
6 - Posted by
cmoore479
on January 1, 2005 - 9:49 pm The Jet 7 looks great but the most sinister part about it is that the fan unit holds a considerable "charge" and for some reason, once I increased the fan speed, my new Athlon XP 3200+ popped like a firecracker and I had to run and have it replaced. I'm a bit afraid of this fan. Can you tell me more?
7 - Posted by
Guest
on February 3, 2005 - 3:08 am the jet didn't work as well because it was starved of air by the two 80mm exaust fans. a blower sucks air in on both sides and the fans were struggling with the jet for air.
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