Introduction

From the FSP website:

FSP Group is one of the global leading power supply manufacturer. Since its establishment in 1993, FSP Group has followed the management conception "service, profession, and innovation" to continuously fulfill its responsibilities as a green energy resolution supplier. With the combination of its leading role in power supply technology and the cultivation of green energy field, FSP Group now provides more competitive quality products and makes itself the most reliable partner for customers, consumers, and suppliers with joint creation of maximized values.

Under the continuous R&D in advanced technology and positioning in ultra-high efficiency, optimal product life, and development of alternative energy, FSP Group will introduce long- term accumulated power supply technology to more application fields to cover innovative products in ICT, consumer electronics, industrial, lighting, medical, and alternative energy.

FSP Group in pursuit of the vision of sustainable development builds its international green brand image to convey 3S (Safe, Stable, Saving) concept and to fulfill its corporate social responsibilities.

FSP is an oldtimer in the PC market. Having been offering power supplies, industrial and medical systems, TVs, etc., since 1993, they now also provide power supplies for many more vendors, with a great number of them being OEM systems. However, as with any business, FSP is not complacent as they have even expanded into power banks, uninterruptible power supplies, computer cases, and system cooling.

The first cooler FSP released that I tested was the Windale 6. In today's review, I look at the Windale 4. It's the smaller sibling that is no nonsense or fluff. It's a single tower design with four direct-touch heatpipes. You won't find any fancy LEDs or other gimmicks here. Instead, FSP is offering a no-frills CPU cooler. Before taking a closer look at the unit itself, here are its specifications:

Packaging

The Windale 4 from FSP comes in a box that measures in at roughly 12.4 cm long, 11.1 cm wide, and 19.0 cm tall. On the front is an image of the cooler with a shot of the heatpipes, which form the base and make direct contact with the CPU. AM4 support is also mentioned on the front, so Ryzen users will be happy to know that it's ready to go out of box for those systems. The left side details a few features and has a graph showing the cooler's cooling performance at various TDP levels. Finally, there's the back which goes into detail on the cooler's specifications, supported sockets, and more.


A black and gray image showing the heatsink and fan can be found on the right side. Otherwise, there's little else to be seen here. The top just has the 180 watt TDP and FSP website URL listed. Nothing else to be seen, and sadly, there's no warranty information on the box either.

Contents

The FSP Windale 4 is packed inside a rather small cardboard box with some foam on the top and bottom for protection. While not the best packaging I have seen, it is far above average - good job, FSP! The peace of mind of knowing that what you have bought will arrive safely is often overlooked by many companies.


The Windale 4 supports and comes with everything necessary for modern sockets. A few extras are even included. While FSP could have stuck with just four rubber fan holders, they instead included eight. That allows for a dual-fan configuration to be used or gives you an extra set down the line should the rubber fan mounts break, which is a nice touch.

Common parts supplied for mounting include:

• 8x Rubber fan mounts
• 4x Backplate screws
• 4x LGA2011 screw pillars
• 4x Black screw pillars
• 4x Nuts
• 2x Crossbar screws
• 2x AMD mounting arms
• 2x Intel mounting arms
• 1x Crossbar
• 1x Backplate
• 1x Packet of thermal grease
• 1x Instruction book
• 1x 120 mm fan
• 1x Heatsink