How is this possible?

[Kelainefes]

It looks like everybody says that the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 is THE best performing air cooler out there, but if you look here and here it looks like it isn't, coming behind the new (puny in comparison) Xigmatek, his older brother the Ultra 120 (wich has 2 less heatpipes), and the 3Rsystem Iceage 120??!?
Why is that? Should we buy these young guns and try them?
Or is that site using a flawed approach in measuring the performance of the HSF?
One thing i noticed in their test methodology is that they don't use more than one fan for HSFs that come without one included like the Thermalrights (ie one 100+ CFM noisy fan, and another one that gives around 70 but quieter).
I took a peek at the review of the TRUE 120 and the TRU 120, and they used different and never heard before fans that weren't even spinning at the same RPM! How can we compare results then?

[D.M]

I too looked at these reviews and thought, What! Their testing methods are the same so cant be directly compared, also the eXtreme is marked as one of the best in most other places so personally unless they re-review them all in a controled and equal way then I would ignore them and take an overall view from all the other reviews out there

[godsdog]

Same here, I wait to see the consensus right across the board over a period of time, reviews and user feedback, not just one snapshot from one outlet.

[Clunk]

Theres just too many factors to say that there is one clear winner.

The testing conditions won't be the same from review to review, other things like room temps, other hardware used, CPU voltage, how much actual voltage the CPU received, thermal paste, type & amount of fans used etc...

I think it's safe to say that the TRUE is a great cooler, and if another cooler beats it by a couple of C in a test, doesn't make it any less of a good cooler

[GSte]

I've seen that review too mate. Their results must be wrong. If you read it in detail they had a problem with the TRUE in that it had a concave base that they didn't manage to fix. I think they used different fans too. The Xigmatek isn't puny either, it uses direct heatpipe touch, and that is the technology we will be seeing on all high end coolers soon, it seems to make a MASSIVE difference to temps.

[Kelainefes]

One thing that left me astonished is that they use a custom "heat plate" (a resistance inside a flat copper block with the surface of a CPU) to be sure the heat produced is exactly the same every time, and then they don't use the same fan at least for the ones that come without one included, and then they go on and show noise level measurements taken in a sound proof box even for those!!!
Doesn't make much sense to me, since i doubt that the noise a fan will produce will change that much from a HSF to another, and since some come without one in the box, it's totally up to the end user to pick a silent or a noisy one.

[Clunk]

Closer fins will often result in a louder noise if a fan is blowing directly onto it.

I think this could be counteracted by having the fan pulling the air through instead of pushing.