Introduction

Remembering back to when I did the A+ Cupid 3 review, during the build I ran into a slight issue. The issue was that when I installed the retail Intel cooler that accompanied my E8600, it was binding with the PSU that was mounted directly above it. Correcting the issue of alignment was pretty easy to overcome, but that left the fans, both on the PSU and the retail cooler, millimeters away, starving each other for what air that managed to get into the case. This hurt both CPU cooling performance as well as allowing the PSU to run a little warmer than expected.

This issue had been on my mind for some time now, as I wanted to use this downstairs as a web browser and movie player. With both fans starving each other I wasn't comfortable setting it in my entertainment center, where air flow is already at a minimum. Then, not too long ago, SilverStone via e-mail asked if I'd like to take a look at one of their low profile CPU coolers. I saw they had both and AMD and Intel versions of these low profile coolers and with my ZOTAC mITX being LGA775 my choice was made easy to figure out which one I would test. I was hoping in the end that this may cure my binding issue inside my Cupid 3 HTPC.

The low profile cooler in question I will review today is the SilverStone NT07-775. The NT is for the Nirogon series of coolers and the 775 at the end is of course for the socket it applies to. The AMD counterpart is labeled as NT07-AM2 and sports a different design entirely; this makes selection of the right version of CPU cooler very simple. SilverStone boasts better cooling performance and at a lower noise level than the Intel retail cooler. Soon, after a few images, I will strap these two coolers up in a head to head comparison. Let's see what the NT07-775 low profile cooler has to offer in HTPC or SFF cases.