Thermaltake Volcano 7+
The Volcano 7+ is Thermaltake's first stab at the really high performance air cooler market. No good-looking but ordinary-performing fancy round heat sink this time; just a big old slab of skived copper, topped by a high power 70mm fan.
That heat sink is as pretty as any skived sink I've seen, and bigger than most; it's a 70-by-70mm job.
Besides its glam copper heat sink, the Volcano 7+ has two unusual features.
One, it swings both ways. You get a Socket A/370 mounting clip with the 7+, but you also get a mounting kit that lets you use the 7+ on a Socket 478 motherboard. I review the 7+ in Socket 478 mode here.
To install the Socket A/370 clip, you just drop it into the slot in the heat sink, then attach the fan cage with four of the provided screws; the heat sink comes with the fan cage unattached.
The clip is an unremarkable screwdriver-attach unit that only engages the centre hook on each side. This is a quite weighty cooler, so I'd really rather see a three-point clip, but it should be fine as long as your CPU socket's in good shape and your computer doesn't have to endure too much delta-V.
The Volcano 7 kit gives you an aluminium-cased speed controller, too. The controller lets you dial down the ferocious fan to a more acceptable noise level. There's a four-pin PSU-connector socket on one end of the controller cable, and a three-pin socket on the other. The speed controller fan connector also provides a single-conductor three-pin plug which you can plug into a motherboard fan header for speed monitoring, so you can keep an eye on the fan RPM while you're using the speed controller.
A three position switch on the controller lets you select full, medium or low power. Even if you want to use full power, you should still use the controller or some other PSU-connector adapter, since this fan's likely to want more current than your motherboard fan headers can deliver.
Inside the speed controller, the switch turns out to be putting either one or two heat-shrink-covered components in series with the fan, as you'd expect. The components, though, aren't simple resistors; they're Zener diodes, which can be used, essentially, as magic volt subtractors in a simple circuit like this. Each of these Zeners chops about three volts off the supply the fan sees, regardless of the type of fan connected - attach a hugely powerful fan and you'll blow up the diodes, but the heat-sink body of the speed controller only gets vaguely warm when it's used with the 7+'s fan, so they've probably got a decent amount of headroom.
In the medium power setting, the controller gives about half fan power. In the low power position, it gives about 20% fan power.
The base of the 7+ is both flat and shiny; it could be more mirror-like, but even serious lapping enthusiasts won't have to do a great deal to the stock finish.
It's just as well that you get a speed controller with the 7+; at full power, its fan is not only quite obnoxiously noisy, but also vibrates quite a bit. Well, the one I got for review did, anyway.
It's not a goodbye-cruel-world I've-thrown-a-blade kind of vibration; I've seen worse. But it's still not going to be good for the fan bearings, and can only make your PC even louder, as the vibration's transferred through the motherboard mounts to your case.
At medium power, the 7+ is still considerably noisier than the average cooler, but the vibration problem's much less serious. At low power, the 7+ isn't much louder than the average single-fan PC power supply, and doesn't shake significantly at all.
How's it perform?
Very well indeed.
With the fan at full power, the 7+ scored a superb 0.52°C/W. It tied for first place in the Socket A/370 air cooler category with the awesome - and impractical - Swiftech MCX462.
But full power's not a nice experience, thanks to the 7+'s buzzy fan.
Pleasingly, though, even at medium power the 7+ managed 0.54°C/W. That's still outstanding performance, more than good enough for practically anybody, and near enough to the full power performance as makes no difference.
At low power, the 7+ still performed brilliantly, considering that it was now a bona fide quiet cooler, by most people's standards anyway. 0.62°C/W.
At $AUD71.50 delivered from Aus PC Market, the 7+ isn't a cheap cooler - but nothing that performs like this is. It's only 25% more expensive than the Volcano 7, though, and it's cheaper than the
really extreme air coolers. It's about half the price of an MCX462 with fan, for instance; the Swiftech cooler has a superior bolt-on mounting system and better made fan, but that's about it for its advantages.
The 7+ also has a 7 by 7cm footprint - the straight-down, no-fan-adaptor design has to have a lot to do with its excellent scores - which means that it might not fit on some motherboards. It shouldn't be a big problem, though; only 8 by 8cm coolers stand a really good chance of hitting capacitors on any recent boards.
So if you can afford it, and if you can fit it on your motherboard, the Volcano 7+ is well worth owning. Even if you were considering a more expensive super-exotic cooler instead.
Recommended.
:strip_exif()/u/31574/d57667d23e497026ce117.gif?f=community)
/u/45661/Moogle.png?f=community)
en mij 
ff een handje helpen, thnx 
Maar in ieder geval nog bedankt lipo!!! Ik ga em meteen bestellen 
)
:strip_exif()/u/2603/icon.gif?f=community){kind=icon}
rechts boven de desbetreffende post. Kan geen kwaad dat alsnog te doen gezien de, zoals je het zelf zegt, eigenwijze inhoud 
:strip_icc():strip_exif()/u/4400/haai.jpg?f=community)
:strip_exif()/u/9059/users.gif?f=community)
das pas LOMP !! Vind ik toch best zielig 
n00b 