Installation

The VapoChill Micro is quite possibly one of the easiest coolers to install.  You do not need to remove your motherboard and it is a completely tool-free install. 

The fan is held onto the plastic shroud using the included four plastic push pins.  This makes it easy to switch fans when needed.  Next, the metal support bracket is carefully slipped between the bottom base, where it is supported by the two retention clips that are also included.  Because of its incredibly lightweight design, this is all that is really needed to properly keep it in place.

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A final shot of the cooler mounted on the excellent Abit IS7 motherboard.  You can see there is plenty of space around the heatsink itself.  There should be no clearance issues with any rear exhaust fans.

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After your done mounting the cooler, you can attach the cables to the included fan controller and mount it on a free PCI slot. 

Now, one thing I did find quite odd was that both the Extreme & High End fans provided featured a non-standard 4-pin power connector.  Fortunately, with the final product release, a somewhat modded adapter is included to support it.  Should you lose this cable, I assume you can always cut a standard 3 pin adapter similar to the one they include in order to power their higher speed fans.  You can also always get another high performance 90mm fan.

Performance

Before we show you the results, let's take a quick look at our test system specs...

Considering Asetek did provide all three fans, thorough testing was done using all to capture CPU temps both idle and under load.  Idle temps were recorded after at least 30 minutes of operation.  Temps readings also provided both at stock and maximum overclock.

Unfortunately, I wasn't very impressed with the results.  While the temps at stock speeds were quite good, it was when I ran the system at maximum overclock when I encountered some heat issues.  Let's have a look...

Cooling performance was quite good when running at stock speeds.  The Ultra Low Noise fan obviously showed the least impressive results.  The Extreme Performance fan was a bit too noisy for me when running at full power.  The High Speed fan was just slightly noisier, but not that much more in comparison.

I ran into quite a few issues when loading the system at its maximum stable overclock.  First off, I simply could not push the system to the same level as I recently did with the Koolance Aquain.  Maximum stable OC was 3.5, and even that gave me some rather serious heat issues.  Idle temps significantly jumped and load temps easily passed 60ºC with the Ultra Low Noise fan, setting off the alarm on and off during stress testing.  Sorry folks, I like to only provide the most accurate and honest results possible and the VapoChill Micro just couldn't keep up when loading the system.  However, one area where this cooler does impress, is its ability to quickly cool the processor back down after load.  When monitoring temps, it took only 30 seconds to get the system back to idle temps.  Very few coolers are honestly able to do this so quickly. 

Note:  Considering the rather disappointing results when overclocking, I thought maybe this was due to the unique thermal compound applied to the cooler.  With that said, I took the heatsink out, cleaned it thoroughly, and then applied a thin layer of trusty Arctic Silver 5.  This apparently did not improve cooling performance by any means. 

Next: Conclusions