Verdict: Abysmal cooling ability, thanks to a restrictive mounting mechanism.

According to Greek mythology, the Titans were a race of powerful deities who were eventually overthrown by the Olympians. Throughout history, the word Titan has been associated with large, powerful objects, although, in the case of the RMS Titanic, the name could be considered a curse.

The TTC-NK32TZ supports all types of desktop AMD64 processor, as it simply clips onto the standard CPU mounting bracket on all motherboards. However, its incredibly simple retention mechanism has a downside. This is because the CPU socket on some motherboards is aligned vertically in relation to the top edge of the PCB, and horizontally on others. When the TTC-NK32TZ is mounted on motherboards with a vertically aligned CPU socket, the 92mm fixed-speed fan draws air directly off the back of the graphics card, which is a hot-running component.

This means that the TTC-NK32TZ will perform better on motherboards with a horizontally aligned CPU socket than it will on motherboards with a vertically aligned CPU socket, such as the Asus M2R32-MVP in our test rig. This explains why the TTC-NK32TZ failed to provide adequate cooling for our Socket AM2 test chip, causing it to overheat and shut down.

Ultimately, despite being one of the cheapest Socket AM2 HSFs on the market, the TTC-NK32TZ is undermined by an inflexible mounting mechanism and relatively noisy fan. As such, it's worse than the reference AMD HSF, and therefore not worth buying.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
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