Verdict: Poor design and poor cooling, especially for LGA775 Pentium 4 CPUs

This Luxotop is exactly the same heatsink as the Thermaltake Silent Tower, so it suffers from the same hopeless mounting mechanism.

The only difference is that the original audible, though tolerable, 92mm fan has been replaced by a 92mm Noiseblocker SE2. But this fan doesn't actually move as much air as the original (38.2cfm compared to 52.24cfm). As a result of the reduced airflow, the Luxotop Silent Tower Noiseblocker is poorer at cooling CPUs than the Thermaltake Silent Tower.

The Thermaltake cooled the overclocked Athlon 64 FX-55 to 15ûC below the reference AMD HSF, but the Luxotop only cooled it by an extra 10ûC. However, the real problem is that the Luxotop couldn't keep our overclocked and overvolted 3.96GHz Pentium 4e running for more than a few minutes before the automatic overheat protection shut down the PC.

As the Luxotop is in every way a step backwards from the original Thermaltake design (which isn't all that great anyway), we can't recommend it. It's awkward to fit and there are far better HSFs for your Athlon 64 or Pentium 4e in this Labs test.

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