A closer look

The TherMax II is made from a mix of both aluminum and copper. The heat pipes of the cooler are all just pure copper, with no nickel coating. These four copper heat pipes run throughout the heatsink and appear on both sides, giving the impression that there are eight heat pipes. The heat pipes run throughout a block of aluminium fins. This design is very similar to many other DHT coolers.


The 120mm fan that comes with the TherMax II is a high performance fan, rated at 93.3 CFM. The plastic outside is black and the fan is blue and UV reactive. In the middle is simply Spire’s sticker. The fan does not come attached to the heatsink; the user must attach it themselves (via the given instructions on the manual). This is both an advantage and a disadvantage, it is good as users can choose another 120mm fan and attach that (i.e., an LED fan) or they can simply use the cooler without a fan (for complete silence). The downfall, though, is the fact that users must take an extra step when installing the heatsink.


The cooler has a standard 3 pin power connector which can be plugged straight into the motherboard (which will run the fan at full speed). Alternatively, the fan can be plugged into a supplied three way cable. This cable accepts the fan, plugs into the motherboard’s fan connector and plugs into the fan controller. The controller accepts a 3 pin connection and then outputs a normal 4 pin power Molex connector (via another supplied cable). This is strange as it shows the fan/fan controller cannot be powered only via the 3 pin motherboard plug. A four pin PWM controller is not required, simply due to the fact that the fan controller will control the speed of the fan, not the motherboard.


The heat pipes are made of pure copper, and have no nickel plated coating (hence the bronze colour of the pipes). Towards the bottom of the heatsink, these pipes actually form the base of the heatsink, as they are what connects to the CPU (direct heat pipe contact). This allows the heat from the CPU to transfer straight into the heat pipes and then into the aluminium block of fins. Towards the upper end of the cooler where the fins are located, all four pipes run throughout the block twice. They are designed in a U shape. They each run down the block of fins into the base, and then go back up into the block of fins on the other side. As it is shown, the pipes run straight through the aluminium block of fins and are capped off on the other side by aluminium (so no pipes stick out), showing that the heat is distributed equally throughout the entire block of fins.


As mentioned, the base is made up of the actual heat pipes. These pipes have been shaved down to create a flat surface, and are wedged between aluminium fins. Spire have not included a pre-applied thermal compound, yet do supply thermal compound in a separate tube. The cooler has an attached bracket and supplied clips, making installation tool-free. These clips latch on to the supplied base for Intel Socket 775 based installations or into the standard AMD retention bracket.