Now with "Very Xtra" Good.

A long long time ago in the land of igloos and polar bears, we took a look at the Thermaltake Big Typhoon Silent CPU Cooler, the original gargantuan heat-piped heatsink with aluminum fins just big enough to satisfy the 120mm fan that sits atop. Times have changed since so long ago... For example, passing of the Socket A for instance and they seemed to have dropped the "Silent" from the namesake. And now, this rather obese design has made a come back, sporting support for LGA775 and Socket 939/AM2.

Only a couple things have changed: The brackets (and how they fit onto the copper base plate), and the fan speed controller. If one could recall from just a couple years back, the brackets required that a support plate be stuck to the back of the motherboard. At the time, CPU sockets weren't in the best of shape, and simply weren't meant to handle almost a kilogram of solid metal. Nowadays, AMD's got their Socket 939 featuring a CPU cradle that is very much the holy-grail of heatsink installation. On the other hand, Intel's got its four-point system where the heatsink is held down by "fastener-caps". It allows for larger heatsinks, but can be a problem in tight spaces.

No more confuzzle!

If you need any further proof of how easy the installation has become, look no further than the manual, which is "exactly the same...only 1/8th the size". No really, it's certainly a lot shorter because of how sockets seem to have been reduced to two major designs. It's funny because they have a separate installation picture guide for AMD's AM2 socket even though it uses the same bracket.  I guess the lawyers have to look over the documentation before sending it off to the printers.

The second thing that has really changed is the fan speed controller. Previously, one would install it into one of the expansion slots and control the speed with a knob from the rear of the case. Now it's directly attached to the 120mm fan, and makes for one less cable to worry about. LGA775 users can still use the 3-pin power connector with the 4-pin common to Intel boards. Just act like the fourth pin doesn't exist and line up the 3-pin connector.

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