Following the release of the Engine 27 two years ago, Thermaltake is taking another stab at the Sandia Labs and CoolChip Technologies inspired air bearing metallic fan heatsink with the tiny Engine 17 cooler which, at a mere 17mm tall, is suitable for even the smallest SFF systems. The Engine 17 CPU cooler is compatible with the newer Intel 115x sockets (LGA 1150, 1151, 1155, and 1156). Measuring 95.1mm x 95.1mm x 17mm, the heatsink features a round nickel plated copper base that contacts the CPU IHS. A metallic PWM fan (9 CFM) with 40 blades spins at at 1,500 to 2,500 RPM while a thin layer of air acts as both a bearing and a heat exchange layer. A ring of 119 angled stationary fins surround the fan and help with cooling.
The Engine 17 cooler has a notably small footprint with the entire cooler staying well within the bounds of the socket mounting holes and barely covering the VRMs in Thermaltake's demo images. There is definitely no need to worry about RAM compatibility with this cooler. The downside, of course, is that the size limits the processors it can cool. Thermaltake claims that the smaller Engine 17 cooler can cool up to 35W TDP processors and while it may not win any temperature feats, it should at least be fairly quiet (it is rated at 11 to 23 dBA). It would enable a very thin SFF system with an AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE or Ryzen 3 2200GE or Intel Coffee Lake T-series e.g. i7-8700T) CPU. Such a system could be used as a quiet and discreet home theater PC or game streaming endpoint or (as Thermaltake is playing up) in a 1U server for low power servers and networking devices.
The Thermaltake Engine 17 will be available soon though exact dates and pricing are still to be determined. It will likely be a bit less than the larger $47 Engine 27 cooler though.
Also read:
Cool, but you’ve probably
Cool, but you’ve probably reached the point of diminishing returns when the heatsink is lower than even very low profile (VLP) DDR4 SODIMMs. Still, keep more low profile heatsinks coming!
If only it wasn’t made and
If only it wasn’t made and sold by Thermaltake it might be worth looking into.
Except it can’t cool a Ryzen
Except it can’t cool a Ryzen because the Thermaltake website says it’s an air cooling solution for Intel socket LGA 1150/1151/1155/1156 type CPU only.
Still, as said above it’s progress.
True enough 🙂 Needs some
True enough 🙂 Needs some modding ingenuity i guess.
PCPER:
Could you guys maybe
PCPER:
Could you guys maybe LINK articles from right below the TITLE rather than have us search the top paragraph for the underlined word/words with the link?
That may seem an unnecessary request and while it’s not a big deal NOW I actually didn’t even realize that you had links for over a YEAR so I assume that there must be others who also miss these links.
UPDATE:
My comment mainly applies to REVIEWS not the way things are linked in this article… when I commented I thought there was a review of the Engine 17 then linked to it and its just the homepage.
So what I’m saying is if there are REVIEWS please just put the link right under the title? (i.e. REVIEW of widget: httpxxxx)
WHO does this cooler target
WHO does this cooler target exactly?
1) Many low-power CPU’s and SoC’s can utilize just a heatsink.
2) if active cooling is needed there are CHEAPER products available with probably as good or better cooling that are also essentially SILENT.
The HEIGHT seems unnecessarily low for a PC motherboard considering even the connectors at the back sit higher.
I doubt the reality of its use-case changed much since Gamers Nexus reviewed the Engine 27 last year:
https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2806-thermaltake-engine-27-review-vs-silverstone-and-cryorig/page-2
“Ultimately, the Engine 27 isn’t a bad cooler – it performs about the same as similarly sized products, so it’s not some crime against humanity. That said, it’s priced significantly out of its performance bracket, and the high-pitched whine at max RPM can get a bit irritating. You’d want to run this at a lower RPM to account for that.”
I wonder if they fixed the NOISE issue but even if they have I still wonder who has such limited space that they can’t buy a cheaper cooler that performs similarly.