Gelid GX-7 CPU cooler review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

Gelids GX-7 is a fun product. It has good looks and some new innovation to be found in the cooling block. The seven thick (rearranged) heatpipes help our greatly decreasing that oh so important problem of processors, these days, heat. It is a nice cooler, though honestly I expected a little more from the one fan configuration.

A couple of other reviews actually conclude this cooler to be really good. There are however a number of negatives that somehow other reviewers seem to leave out.

First off, the mounting system is well not dreadful yet not exactly a fun process. You need a handful of components to mount the cooler making it not the most user-friendly cooler I have ever seated onto a motherboard. The motherboard will need to come out 100% as you'll be flipping and tossing it around to get the mounting brackets secured.

Noise then, the amount of noise the fans create when the CPU starts to heat up is rather high. With the CPU at default and the motherboard automatically regulating FAN RPM we reached roughly 43 dBA with one fan and even touched 45 DBa with two fans. Now with regulated fan RPM in idle the fan rotation will go down, but it remains at a little noise at the high end of the spectrum when the processor is under load. My tip: To compensate for the noise levels use a fan controller or set your BIOS at, say, 50~50% RPM maximum. Only then will the noise levels calm down, at the cost of some performance of course. or get yourself some better fans.

Design wise we also have to admit that Gelid did a nice job with the cooler. It would have been nice to see some sort of fan-control function applied with a button/LED combo though, as that is really what I feel to be lacking on this product. Other then that, heatpipe coolers look and all feel the same these days. With the market is cutthroat and saturated you need something special alright.

Performance wise we see decent cooling performance. You should not be afraid to overclock your processor, as the GX-7 will keep the temperatures at acceptable levels with some extra capacity. Here as well, I expected a tiny bit more bite out of the design. So overall we feel the Gelid GX-7 is a nice cooler with decent performance levels. You can find the Gelid GX-7 for roughly $65 / 45 Euro in the stores as we speak.

• Leave/read comments on this product
• Sign up to receive a notice when we publish a new article
• Or go back to Guru3D's front page.