ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme Cooler Review
ThermalRight has a long tradition of making high quality performance oriented coolers with simple aesthetically pleasing designs. With this being said, ThermalRight took the Ultra 120 cooler and transformed it into this much better, modernized version. They added two more heatpipes and named it the Ultra 120 Extreme, bringing the total heatpipes to a total of six. We all know adding two more heat pipes gives us a bit more comfort level to an all ready top of the line product.
When you open the box, you can’t help but notice that ThermalRight took the Ultra 120 Extreme to a higher level with six heatpipes, a tower of thin aluminum fins and a high volume 120mm fan, the Ultra 120 cooler truly looks like it’s the King of Coolers.
The Ultra 120 Extreme was designed by engineers to be used in conjunction with just about all of Intel and AMD’s recent models, including Intel’s new LGA 1366 socket to support Intel Core i7 965XE/940/920 processors and AMD AM2 based motherboards. For you AMD AM2 board owners, you will need a special AM2 metal back plate which is sold separately. Of course as with any product you need to check ThermalRight’s motherboard compatibility list here before you make a purchase to prevent any problems.
The Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme is a tall cooler weighing in at at 160mm high x 132mm wide and 63.4mm thick. Being this said, make sure you measure from the socket to where you will attach the case side panel, to guarentee there’s enough free space before making a purchase.
Engineer’s gave the Ultra 120 eXtreme the ability to mount in different positions; facing up, down, right or left, giving you the flexibility to mount the cooler in a way that you can direct the warm air out of the case. You won’t find a fan with this cooler so you will need to purchase one which is a good thing if you ask me as I have my favs when it comes to fans, I’m sure you do too. One excellent option you may want to consider is the Scythe S-Flex 800 RPM, which can move a lot of air. The Scythe S-Flex used in combination with the Ultra 120 eXtreme, performed well enough to get within 1 degree Celsius of Thermaltake’s best cooler that was running at 1250 RPM.
The Ultra 120 was the first cooler to effectively cool a stock Core 2 Duo without a fan. The Ultra 120 Extreme takes this even further with two extra heatpipes which increases cooling in heavy load conditions, plus improving fanless operations.
The ThermalRight Ultra Extreme 120 is an impressive cooling system. The cooler may be considered pricey being it sells for $60 before purchasing a fan, but it’s well worth it’s low-noise and solid high performance. It cools better at all speeds and overclocks, and overclocks the processor further than any air CPU cooler we have seen. We highly recommend performance enthusiasts who want a air cooler to use the Ultra 120 Extreme to cool their processor.
[...] around it to install a large after market CPU cooler such as the Thermalright cooler we reviewed here or the Coolermaster Hyper Z600 CPU cooler and plenty of solid capacitors on all four sides. [...]