I have always considered Thermaltake to be one of the premier manufacturers of cases and cooling products; even though I haven't always been a fan of all of their products.  With the loud design of many products entering the market today, it seems that there has been a lack of balance between the design and the function, whereas the function doesn't say as much about the performance as the appearance does.  Thermaltake thinks they can regain some of my confidence by enticing me, the enthusiast, with a CPU cooler that claims it can do the job and looks like it should be able to without the zany design elements some have chosen to opt for over functionality.

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There are times in a computer's life when air cooling will no longer fit the bill. Unfortunately, most main stream computer users are sometimes afraid to experiment. This should no longer be the case because water and electronics were meant for each other.

If you have been following computing, things have been changing, duh. As things get faster, they require greater cooling. As things got faster, heat sinks got bigger and bigger, making more noise than my grandmother in the bathroom. For this reason, some of us have ventured into mixing water and electricity to bring the noise down and the speeds up. Read More...

If you haven't gone through it already, you just might. I spent a bunch of money on motherboards recently and they all seem to be having the same problem. Is it because they just don't make them like they used to? I am referring to the active cooling on my Northbridge; the fans keep making funny noises then crapping out. It drives me crazy. Usually though, the active cooling on the Northbridge was always sub par any way; just enough to get by. With all the advancements in mobos, the cooling solutions have been getting more and more important. So with two fans going on two different motherboards, what options do we have left? Thermaltake not only has an answer, they claim they have a better solution than was shipped with the motherboard in the first place. Enter the Extreme Spirit II. Read More...

If you are a regular to COD, you would understand by now that I am very passionate about computer chassis. A well designed chassis is the basis of a well built system. Today, Thermaltake has once again asked that I examine one of their designs. Enter the Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Aluminum Case.

Let me start off by saying, when I received it, I had to immediately open the box; I thought they forgot to put the case in there. It is extremely light, weighing in at only 13.2lbs. This is a HUGE difference from the last case they sent me for review, the Damier V5000A, which weighed in at 35.27lbs. Read More...

To start I would like to thank Xoxide for sending this cooler for review. The first thing I noticed after seeing the flashy packaging was how heavy this thing is. I really wasn't expecting a GPU cooler to be this heavy (490 grams). As you can see from the picture the packaging is very attractive and eye catching. My second impression was that this thing is huge. It has a blower fan along one edge that also makes it very tall. Rather than go into the detailed specifications you can view them here. It has Dual Heatpipes, two cooling fans, copper ramsinks and a fan controller included. The fan controller fits in a PCI slot and is controlled from the rear of the PC. I'm not so sure about how this will work out. I really don't like the idea of having to reach around to the back of my PC every time I need to adjust the fan speed or turn on the blower. The way some people setup their systems this would be a real pain. I'm thinking of modding the switch into an unused 3 .5 inch floppy bay. But that's a project for another day. Read More...

If there is one thing I love about the computing show grounds, it's the computer cases. With everyone bringing their "A" game these days, it's hard to decide who will end up with a chunk of my earnings. Some cases are flashy, some are simple; today, flashy is the word, functionality is the goal, and price is the key.

Thermaltake is trying to dazzle us with their latest creations. They are a mixture of tried and true form, with rodeo clown appearances. With these things in mind, they have decided to let us play with one of their models from the Damier Series; the Modern Life Style XaserV Damier V5000A. Read More...