Nexus CVT-9000 CPU Cooler

For this review I will relate my experience installing the Nexus VCT-9000, a very quiet 12 CM fan adorned CPU Cooler.

As you can see this CPU heat sink is quit extraordinary looking, with five heat pipes, one 8mm & four 6mm that pump the heat from the CPU to the Fins & a 12cm very quiet fan that stands at an angle.

Instead of burying the heat pipes in the core of a block of copper, Nexus has mechanically attached them to the primary heat sink made of on block of aluminium & they are resting directly on the CPU die cover. on the blue prints it seems very clever but when i opened the box my first problem was with the “please remove before use” sticker that left quite a lot of glue on the heat pipes & i thought myself that was not a very good beginning!

Then i was surprised to see that the tubes surface is quite ruff & not highly polished normal like. In addition to that there’s are big gapes between the pipes, so i thought that the heat transfer might be impaired by a lot of unused area, & wen positioning the assembly on a processor the external pipes are only partially touching the die.

So first, I thoroughly cleaned the pipes, then I tried to assemble the Intel mounting brackets to the heat sink. The manual was less than clear about the exact positioning but after some try & error I did find that they have to be mounted inside the side grooves, then you have to tighten the Philips screw. you will have to do that one side at a time to avoid loosening the primary Heat Sink. Then I applied the right amount of Heat Past to the CPU die & to the pipes, to mount the assembly on the motherboard. that’s when the fun began. First I tried to install the cooler exhaust facing the rear fan to assure a good air flow, like all the very big coolers it is quite difficult to access the motherboard mounting brackets & it is impossible to see under the assembly to be sure that everything is standing as it should. The cooler did not want to seat on the CPU & it was wobbling, after a few unsuccessful tries I had to remove the rear exhaust fan to be able to observe the underside. There was a problem with a line of small capacitor that sit very close to the CPU,

they were higher than the CPU die & the heat pipes where touching them! Second strike-out for the “pipes on Die” Nexus technology. OK, so I positioned the cooler exhaust facing up, so the computer case air flow would not be completely upset. It is quite awkward to install it on the motherboard, so it took me a while to secure it. After checking everything & making sure that the heat pipes were not touching anything on the mother board i tried to close the case. No such luck, the case side 12cm fan was touching the cooler. No surprise there since the cooler assembly is quite large. Having moved the side fan, I closed the case & fired the computer to check the cooling powers in real world environment.

The original setup was with a stock Intel CPU cooler with the generic fan. in that configuration, playing any games was dangerous & playing borderlands 2 was tantamount to frying the CPU, the I5 four core CPU reached peaks of 74⁰ Celsius .

After all the negative hype that i had to give this cooler the real world results were extremely favorable, when playing borderlands 2, temperatures are barely peaking at 60⁰ Celsius. so i tried to max the four core CPU by playing a movie, leaving an open internet page full of graphics & playing borderlands 2! All four cores at 100%! After 10 minutes of playing, the temperature peaked sometimes at 64⁰ Celsius & stayed between 58⁰ to 62⁰ Celsius on all Cores. That is at least a 10⁰ Celsius better than the stock Intel cooler for a very affordable price & it’s very quiet, even at full RPM.

Bottom line;

Cons; awkward, very difficult to install, may not fit any motherboard.

Pro; standard 12 cm fan that is very easy to replace, very quiet, does the job.

Price-wise, it’s in the low middle range of the quiet coolers.

You must be a professional to install it but it does the job! So if you decide to install this cooler, be prepared with a lot of patience, work meticulously, take your time & check to see if there are any interfering components near the CPU.