Asus Silent Knight II

The Silent Knight II is a bulky affair at 95mm high, but will pay dividends if your PC does a passable impression of a taxiing airliner. Installation is straightforward (although you'll need to remove your motherboard to fit the backplate), and its performance left us in no doubts as to the benefits of those six copper heatpipes. With the cooler set to its inaudible lowest RPM, our Socket 775, 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 6700 idled at 40°C, and peaked at 58°C during our intensive test. Even a hot-running 3.8GHz Pentium 4 ran at a maximum of 63°C. However, this left the cooling fins too hot to touch. The Silent Knight II is a massive improvement on Intel's stock cooler, and is compatible with AM2 and 939 AMD sockets.

Author: Dave Stevenson