L
arge air coolers have plenty
going for them. They’re much
less hassle than a full water-
cooling system, but can often handle the
heat produced by high-end overclocked
CPUs while remaining relatively quiet. You
don’t have to worry about pumps, coolant or
leaks – you can just fit them and then forget
about them. Their size can be an issue, though,
taking up a huge amount of space around the CPU
socket, but that hasn’t prevented IceGiant from creating
one of the largest aid coolers we’ve ever seen in the
ProSiphon Elite.
Thankfully, it’s only 164mm tall, so it’s unlikely to run into too
many issues with CPU clearance in the vast majority of ATX
and micro-ATX cases. It’s compatible with all current sockets
too, including all generations of AMD’s Threadripper sockets.
Accordingly, it sports four 120mm fans (really) and a huge
heatsink that uses a two-phase dielectric fluid that combined,
acts like a bunch of giant heatpipes.
In fact, if you look inside the heatsink from the edge, you
can see a large centre pipe and three enormous horizontal
channels for the liquid and vapour to move inside, dumping
the heat into eight heatsink sections once the vapours cool
and condense inside.
The cooler makes use of gravity to transfer the liquid back
to the contact place where it’s heated and phase-changes
into vapour again, moving heat away from the contact plate.
The company claims this effect works whether the cooler is
mounted on a vertical motherboard or if the motherboard is
flat and face up.
The contact plate itself is enormous, which is good seeing
as IceGiant makes a song and dance about
Threadripper compatibility. It’s certainly large
enough to cover all but tiny slivers of the edge of
a Threadripper headspreader, which is far bigger
than any other universal heatsink we’ve tested.
In stark contrast to many large air coolers,
memory clearance is only a slight issue, thanks
to a generous gap of 48mm underneath the
heatsink, although this does mean the likes of
Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro modules, which
are some of the highest models we’ve used, are
just a couple of millimetres too tall.REVIEWS / COOLING
SPEC
Intel compatibility
LGA115x, LGA1200,
LGA2066, LGA2011
AMD compatibility
Socket AM4, TR4/TR4X
Heatsink size with fans (mm)
251 x 129 x 164 (W x D x H)
Fa ns
4 x 120mm
Stated noise
32dBACPU AIR COOLER
ICEGIANT PROSIPHON
ELITE /£150 inc VAT
SUPPLIER overclockers.co.ukNearby I/O shrouds and VRM heatsinks can also potentially
be an issue, although we tried several boards where the
shroud extended well above the actual I/O bracket, and they
all fitted underneath the ProSiphon Elite’s massive heatsink.
The fans are mounted on the sides of the heatsink, so have
no bearing on memory or motherboard clearance. Two fans
are mounted out of the box in pull mode, with a further two
included in the box that you can add in push mode. They’re
reasonably powerful, with peak speeds of 2,300rpm, and
use standard screws to fit. As such, if you wanted, you could
use your own fans, perhaps to add some RGB lighting to the
equation, or to liven up the otherwise bland black exterior a bit.
Installation can be tricky due to the size and weight
of the cooler, although the mounting mechanisms are
relatively simple. The mount for AMD sockets has a single
large top plate that sits over the CPU socket, securing to the
mounting threads on Threadripper motherboards and thec
us
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