Verdict: Too small to provide significantly better cooling than the reference AMD HSF

Compared with the Hyper 6+, the Susurro is a much more traditional-looking HSF, which is no doubt the reason that Cooler Master can afford to sell it for nearly half the price.

As said, the design is very traditional, consisting of a copper base and fins cooled by a temperature-controlled, variable-speed fan. The fan spins at between 800rpm and 3,200rpm, although during our testing, it rarely went beyond a calm 1,500rpm.

Cooler Master makes a big song and dance on its website about the small dimensions of the Susurro. Unfortunately, because the Surruro is so small, its fins don't have as large a surface area as that of more well-endowed HSFs, such as the Scythe Ninja, so it isn't able to dissipate heat as quickly. This meant it was only able to cool the Athlon 64 test CPU to 7ûC below the reference AMD HSF.

In contrast, the Scythe Ninja matched this temperature without a fan, and cooled the CPU to 15ûC below the reference AMD HSF with a slow-spinning 120mm fan.

Although there's nothing wrong with the Susurro, it can't compete with the large-finned HSFs from other manufacturers. Unless you're building a compact micro-ATX-sized PC, it's best left on the shelf.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
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• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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