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The last cooler in this mini roundup is the Coolermaster Vortex TX. This is a far more traditional air cooler than the previous two models. It’s a solid lump of copper which is attached to very thin copper fins that dissipate the heat with the help of a top mounted round 92mm fan.

The Vortex TX uses the same mounting mechanism as the Hyper 6+ which makes me hope that it wasn’t originally made for the Vortex TX and later adopted for the Hyper 6+. Either which way the mounting mechanism has to be quite solid as the Vortex TX weighs 440 grams without the fan which is still quite heavy.

Installing the Vortex TX is not really any easier than installing the Hyper 6+, but due to its smaller size it’s not quite as awkward to work with. The real downside to all of these coolers is the fact that you need to access the rear of the motherboard. So unless you’re building a new system, you have to completely remove your motherboard.

The instructions for the Vortex TX are slightly worse than those with the Hyper 6+ - well, to be honest, the pictures are smaller but apart from that, they’re pretty much identical. The cooling performance of the Vortex TX can’t compete with the previous two coolers due to the lack of heatpipes, but with an idle temperature of 32 degrees Celsius it’s not terrible. However, during full load it hit 64 degrees Celsius which isn’t exactly impressive for an aftermarket solution.

But as always, you get what you pay for and at £21.14, the Vortex TX is the cheapest of the three by some margin. That said, if you’re going to the trouble of fitting an aftermarket CPU cooler, you’re better off spending a bit more and getting true low noise, high efficiency cooling.

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