Verdict and Conclusion
I have to be honest and say that I went into this review not expecting much. I come out of it downright impressed!
The Alpine 11 PLUS is definitely a good replacement for the stock Intel cooler, it not only does a good job at stock settings but has enough cooling power for a decent amount of overclocking as well!
The fan is nice and quiet, ARCTIC (formerly known as Arctic Cooling) makes very good fans.
The heatsink itself is fairly easy to mount and doesn’t require the motherboard to be removed to install the cooler. On my P67a-UD4 it was a bit of a tight fit, but nothing serious.
The Alpine 11 PLUS is fairly low profile, it will fit into any tower/desktop case, and likely almost any small form factor case as well, making this an excellent cooler for the money in those situations.
Price wise with an MSRP of $14.95, this is a good deal. More expensive coolers beat it, but they’re more expensive! If you’re willing to pay a bit over twice as much you can get a significant amount more cooling, but that’s over twice as much money and the more expensive cooler probably won’t fit in a small case.
To summarize, there are pros:
- Compact size.
- Quiet fan.
- Good cooling for the buck.
- Very solid mounting, despite using pushpins.
Nothing being perfect there are cons too:
- Tight fit on my P67a-UD4 motherboard.
- Multi-piece pushpins take a bit of figuring out.
- Base could use a flatter finish
All told this is a good budget upgrade over the stock Intel cooler, it gets a score of 8.5/10 and a Recommended badge.
SCORE
8.5/10
