Verdict: An excellent air-cooled TEC.

I'm not sure that a HSF has a gender - after all, HSFs are inanimate objects made from plastic and metal - so I'm puzzled as to why Titan has named this cooler Amanda. Its cooling ability certainly isn't girly either, mainly because the Amanda uses a TEC.

A TEC (Thermal Electric Cooler) utilises the Peltier effect, which states that when an electric current is passed between two dissimilar metals or semiconductors, heat is driven from one to the other. The Amanda uses a TEC with the 'cold side' pressed against the CPU to boost the transfer of heat away from the CPU and into four large heatpipes, which then shift the heat into a large aluminium heatsink. This heatsink is surrounded by a metal shroud through which air is directed by two very deep 92mm fans.

Other HSFs that have employed TECs have proved to be utterly dire, usually because the combination of a heatsink and fan is insufficient to remove the combined heat generated by the CPU and TEC. This is why TECs are more commonly found attached to waterblocks. However, by using a relatively weak TEC (50W), the Amanda's heat load isn't drastically higher than that of a standard air-cooled heatsink. You'll need to make sure your PSU has a sufficiently powerful 12V rail, though, as the Amanda draws just over 4A from a PCI card and Molex connector.

Installed in our LGA775 test rig, the Amanda cooled our overclocked Core 2 Quad CPU to 10ûC below the reference Intel HSF, so it's obviously a very powerful HSF. Despite having two fans, it's also reasonably quiet. However, at more than £60, it's clearly only worth considering if you're planning on relatively heavy overclocking.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
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• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
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