GlacialTech Siberia CPU Cooler

It has been a few months since I last visited with a GlacialTech offering and when they asked me to take a look at the Siberia Cooler, I was hopeful. Hopeful that they would be able to win on all fronts this time. The Siberia aims at a different target than the Alaska did, the Siberia is designed for quiet cooling, lots of cooling, but uses a design that is no taller than the Nexus FLC-3000 R2. Horizontal heatsinks are perfect for applications where height is not an option, such as home theater PC's. Siberia is cold, let's see if this cooler cools. The Siberia's design looks more like a motor than a CPU cooler! Once again we are greeted with GlaciaTech's "Entering Bearing" fan design. This type of fan is supposed to leverage additional oil capacity within the fan bearing and implements a better seal than traditional sleeve bearing fans. This implementation is supposed to allow a longer usable life time by way of reducing friction further. The heatsink features not just one fan, but two; and these two fans are arranged so that they both move air in the same direction, down. The upper most fan is a 140mm, it moves 72CFM, and produces 33 dB(A). The bottom fan is a 92mm fan that pushes 19CFM at 19 dB(A). This makes the Siberia a bit louder than the Nexus FLC-3000 R2, but it moves more air. The Siberia features the same fan mounting design as the Alaska, but this time around the fans came installed already. The mounting design uses clips that look like cleverly bent paperclips held in place by the cooling fins. They are annoying to install. Pancaked between the two fans are 46 fins with a unique design to them, they all have 5 raised notches to help keep the air flowing. The cooler itself sports 6 separate heatpipes navigating their way through the fins, the Siberia measures 146x150x120 (mm), and weighs in at 620 grams. Like the FLC-3000 R2, the Siberia features fins attached to the base plate to encourage heat dissipation. Again, GlacialTech will not leave your CPU lonely. The Siberia covers a range of CPU's from Intel Celerons to AMD Phenoms. Intel LGA775 Intel Core 2 Quad (Up to 95 watts) Intel Core 2 Extreme (Up to 130 watts) Intel Core 2 Duo (Up to 65 watts) Intel Celeron D (Up to 86 watts) Intel Celeron (Up to 65 watts) Intel LGA1156 Intel Core i5 (Up to 95 watts) Intel Core i3 (Up to 73 watts) Intel Core i7 (Up to 95 watts) Intel LGA1366 Intel Core i7 (Up to 130 watts) Intel Core i7 Extreme (Up to 130 watts) AMD Athlon II X3 (Up to 2.9 GHz/95W/AM3) Athlon II X4 (Up to 2.8 GHz/95W/AM3) Phenom II X4 (Up to 3.4 GHz/140W/AM3, AM2+) Phenom II X3 (Up to 2.8 GHz/95W/AM3) Phenom II X2 (Up to 3.1 GHz/80W/AM3) Phenom X4 (Up to 2.6 GHz/140W/AM2+) Phenom X3 (Up to 2.5 GHz/95W/AM2+, 940) Athlon II X2 (Up to 3.2 GHz/125W/AM2, AM2+, 939) Athlon (Up to 2.8 GHz/89W/AM2, 939, 754) Sempron (Up to 2.7 GHz/62W/AM2, AM3, 754) The installation flat out stinks. Again, like the Alaska, GlacialTech designed this to test my patience. The instructions are provided to you on a piece of paper smaller than an letter sized document, printed in grey scale and details the steps in pictures that are so small you can't really see what is going on. Luckily, the steps involved aren't complicated. If you need a good laugh, read them. Step 1: Print thermal grease on the copper base Step 2: Use M3 screws to fix all Intel and AMD clips. Step 3: Please the 4 fasteners at the 4 holes of motherboard. Step 4: Connect the fan cable connector to the motherboard CPU fan header. Enough laughing, installing the Siberia will test your patience, coordination, dexterity, and your relationship. I had to wake my Fiance up to hold the AMD back plate in place so I can get the heat sink mounted... she was annoyed. The design of the Siberia will make it very difficult for you to place and tighten the provided mounting screws. Luckily, this time around all the screws kept their heads attached to them (read the Alaska review). Before we get too far along, let's define what our bench rig is: Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H AMD Phenom II X4 965 2x2GB Patriot Sector 5 PC3-12800 Seagate 500GB ST3500630AS BitFenix Colossus (click to read our review) BFG LS-450 Windows 7 Professional 64-bit For idle readings, room temperature is maintained at a cozy 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) and the computer is running for an hour before CPU temperatures are logged. Full load is achieved with Prime95 set for In-Place Large FFTs (maximum heat, power consumption, some RAM tested). The TIM is applied and at least 100 hours have passed before the readings are recorded. Temps are recorded every 5 seconds for 45 minutes, then averaged omitting the highest and lowest temperatures recorded. Thanfully for us, the Siberia delivers pretty good cooling. Taking into account that this is not a tower cooler and that it is designed to be somewhat silent you can say this is a contender for your HTPC or silent PC. The Siberia put up numbers that best the Nexus in cooling, but it does so by producing a tiny bit more noise and a requires a patient installer. The Siberia was able to cool our toasty Phenom 6 degrees C better than the Nexus FLC-3000 R2 at full load, idle readings didn't really improve much over the Nexus offering. The question you need to ask yourself at this point is whether or not your CPU will be at 100% for extended periods. If it is, and cooling is what you are after with little noise, you then have to make a decision between the Silent and easy to install Nexus FLC-3000 R2 or the cooling and clumsy installation of the Siberia. Most people will have a one time and done installation making the Siberia an chart topper. I think GlacialTech did a decent job with this cooler. However, I still can't get around the clumsy installation and that is the only thing that keeps me from raving about the GlacialTech lineup so far. The cooling is great for a silent cooler, it looks cool, and it cools quietly. If you don't mind the installation woes, then this is the cooler for your quiet PC.

GlacialTech Siberia CPU Cooler

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