SilverStone Nitrogon NT06-PRO C-Style CPU Cooler Review

Introduction

When the original concept to this design was released, the NT06E was a C-Style cooler that had performance in mind, above and beyond anything else. The cooler stood 82mm tall without any fans on it and was 106mm tall once you added a fan. Since black was so hot then, the sides of the cooler had plates attached to apply the cooler name while adding some style, but the fins and the heat pipes were all left in their natural state. At that time, another concern was to be able to fit in the SUGO SFF cases, and while the NT-06E was good for that then, SilverStone has really pushed the boundaries of just how small a case can be and still provide all the necessary things.

With the trend to "smaller is better" as more and more SFF chassis roll off the assembly lines, SilverStone found the NT06E a bit lacking. While it was a solid contender in its day, as the world evolved around it, they soon saw the need to take this design back to the drawing board. Quite a few things got addressed with this retake on an older idea. For one, noise was a big concern, and they didn't want this to be the loudest thing in the PC, specifically with most SFF chassis sitting very close to the user. The second and really most important thing was to reduce the overall height of the cooler without disregard for the thermal efficiency. Although there is a slight twist on the way this cooler is to be cooled, I get why it was done, but more on that later.

The cooler we are just about to get real up close and personal with today is the SST-NT06-PRO from SilverStone's Nitrogon series of coolers. While the cooler addresses all the things I just mentioned, they also upgraded the looks of the PRO to give it a distinct look when placed next to its aging brother. Considering some of the awkward layouts inside of quite a few SFF chassis designs, this cooler is kept short, and the fan is to be used under the fins blowing up and out of the CPU cooler. The main reasoning to this concept is to try to eliminate the hot air from recycling into the motherboard, but another reason this concept can work well, is that SFF chassis designs put the PSU over the CPU in a lot of layouts, so essentially you can use the fan from your PSU to aid in the CPU cooling when things are too tight for anything other than an AIO offering.

Enough about how, when, and why this is all coming about, I say it's time to jump right in with both feet and see how well this little cooler holds up to our abuse.