Verdict and Conclusion

Thermaltake continues to expand their Frio line, so far all the Frio coolers I've tested have worked well for their price range.

Unfortunately the normal Frio mounting system causes issues on some motherboards, the Frio Advanced uses the same old Frio mounts and has this issue. One of the things I really liked about the Frio Extreme was that it didn't.

The actual performance is hampered on my setup by the combination of direct-touch heatpipes and having to install the cooler rotated 90 degrees. The result is reasonable performance, but not fantastic.

The mounting system works quite well, I like the backplate+braket system quite a bit. It's just the alignment of one screw and capacitors on certain motherboards that is an issue. Other than that it's great.

The cooler looks fantastic, I like the looks a lot.

Fan wise the Frio Advanced is pretty good, with the fans at low speed they are extremely quiet, I can't hear them if my head is more than a few inches away. Starting at about 50% the exhaust fan makes some noise, and around 75% the intake fan starts making noise. The exhaust fan's noise is a vacuum pop type noise, while the intake fan's noise is a fairly quiet ticking. Neither noise is especially offensive, but if you're looking for quiet computing you're going to want to stay at medium to low fan speeds.

All told there are some solid pros:

• Great looks.
• Dual PWM fans.
• Mounting system is excellent on most motherboards.

There are some cons too though:

• Motherboards with a tall capacitor in the wrong spot cause issues with mounting and performance.
• Fans noisy at full speed.
• If you have to mount it rotated on a modern CPU, performance could be better.

At the bottom line this is a good cooler hampered by the length and location of the mounting screws, if Thermaltake took 0.1" off the length of the spring loaded screws all the problems would vanish. As it is, I give it a 7.7/10.

SCORE

7.7/10

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