Introduction and Specifications
We review both members of the Windale air cooler family
FSP might be familiar as a manufacturer of power supplies, but the company has a growing product offering that now includes cases and CPU coolers, among other things. In this review we will examine the Windale line, which consists of the Windale 4 and Windale 6, a pair of tower-style CPU air coolers.
"FSP CPU Air Cooler Windale Series come out with two models: Windale 6 and Windale 4. Both of them are featured with CPU direct contact technology which can release CPU heat more efficiently. The 120mm extreme quiet fan enhances better cooling performance. The High-tech 120mm fin design provides optimized cooling effect. They are highly compatible with the latest sockets of Intel and AMD."
FSP has priced their coolers to compete in what is often called a 'crowded market', and the $29.99 Windale 4 in particular seems to directly compete with the ever-popular Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO – on price, if nothing else. Can FSP's first effort dethrone the EVO as a budget favorite? To this end we will see exactly how the Windale 4 and 6 perform against Cooler Master's venerable air cooler with a toasty Intel Core i7-7700K supplying the load temps (and my trusty SPL meter along for the ride to capture noise levels).
We will get right into it with a summary of the specifications for both FSP Windale coolers:
Windale 4 (model AC401)
- Heatsink Material: Aluminum Alloy
- Heat-pipe: 6 mm x4
- Fan Speed: 600-1600 RPM (PWM) ± 15%
- Bearing Type: Sleeve Bearing
- Fan Air Flow: 60 CFM ± 10%
- Dimensions (LxWxH): 122 x 83 x 158 mm
- Weight: 620 g
Windale 6 (model AC601 – blue LED)
- Heatsink Material: Aluminum Alloy with black plating
- Heat-pipe: 6 mm x 6
- Fan Speed 600-1600 RPM (PWM) ± 15%
- Bearing Type: Sleeve Bearing
- Fan Air Flow: 60 CFM ± 10%
- Dimensions (LxWxH): 122 x 110 x 165 mm
- Weight: 823 g
- FSP Windale 4: $29.99 – Amazon.com
- FSP Windale 6: $44.99 – Amazon.com
Unpacking both of these direct heatpipe coolers reveals nearly identical contents – other than the heatsinks, of course. While not evident, the 120 mm fan included with our Windale 6 features a blue LED light, and a version with a white light is also available (the Windale 4 fan in not illuminated).
The heatsinks look quite different thanks to the matte black finish of the Windale 6, and this larger cooler stands at 165 mm vs. 158 mm with the Windale 4, while offering a heatsink that is 27 mm deeper as well.
Both cooler feature 6 mm heat pipes which come in direct contact with the CPU:
Here is a look at one of the 120 mm sleeve bearing fans, each of which spin from 600 – 1600 RPM and can provide up to 60 CFM airflow. In this photo you can see the protruding rubber-like mounts in place on the fan, ready to be installed on the heatsink.
On the next page we will look at installation and then see how both of these FSP coolers performed!
Well if they have a better
Well if they have a better mounting scheme than the 212 EVO at the same price you have a winner. Because the EVO mounting sucks.
It’s not hard to have a
It’s not hard to have a better mounting system than the 212 Evo, but it’s nice to see more budget air coolers use such a simple and effective design. I wish Cryorig went this route with their H7 instead of their X bracket + pins you have to screw in from the back of the mobo mounting system.
im curious to know why the
im curious to know why the review was done on a intel chip and not an AMD chip? at least do the review on both chips.
It is a cooler review,
It is a cooler review, measuring the coolers ability to dissipate heat relative to other coolers on the market, in this case the Hyper EVO.
The chip does not matter.
The chip does matter, at
The chip does matter, at least since Intel stopped soldering their mainstream CPUs. With those chips, there is a potential heat bottleneck where it doesn’t matter how effectively the cooler can remove heat from the heatspreader because the heat can’t make it from the die to the heatspreader.
Did the results show one
Did the results show one cooler being more effective than the others? Yes!
Is the whole point of these reviews to find out if product A is better than product B under the same conditions? Yes!
Did the review successfully demonstrate this? Yes!
Does the chip matter? No!
You do realize not everyone
You do realize not everyone has and AMD chip laying around just to keep random people on the internet happy right?
If I had unlimited time and
If I had unlimited time and resources I'd love to do AMD and Intel, stock and overclocked, on all cooler testing. Maybe when my son is a little older I can 'convince' him to arrange this for me 🙂
I went with the i7 even though (true story) I was planning to kick off an AM4 test bench for cooler reviews…because I don't want to deal with a CPU temp offset (again). I am very reluctant to go down the road of trying to either estimate based on the board reported temp or hope the particular offset can be trusted – and it was anything but clear back on AM3 with my FX setup that I scrapped for this reason.
I bought an AM4 board and a Ryzen 7 1700X – and sold it to a friend after choosing to stick to a platform that has well-established core temp reporting – and the i7-7700K in its unmodified state is a very hot CPU so it should provide a good test of any cooler.
Another site I could mention simply uses a thermal load generator – and no CPU at all. If I had access to that equipment I would probably do the same. In the end, if this i7 is consistent and I use the same fan profile for every test, I will always have good comparitive data to present in reviews like this.
The span of the 6 direct
The span of the 6 direct contact heat pipes is pretty large compared to the i7-7700K IHS. I am curious if the Windale 6 would be able to demonstrate better performance relative to the Windale 4 when used with processors which have larger mating surfaces (Ryzen or Intel X-series?). HardOCP noted that their i7-4770K appeared to contact just a bit more than 4 of the 6 heat pipes.
*EDIT* Added link to HardOCP article
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/06/19/fsp_windale_6_cpu_air_cooler_review/2
really EVO mounting is
really EVO mounting is irritating and it sucks. I think you should go for some other schemes, otherwise, you are not going to gain any kind of advantages from it.
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