Thermaltake Engine 27 Preliminary Testing

[CarbonVirus]

Hey everyone,
So up to this point I have been running a Cryorig C7 on my i6500; this cooler is considered by many to be the pinnacle of SFF cooling.
I have been following the CoolChip kinetic cooler for about 2 years and was ecstatic when I saw Thermaltake may finally bring the product to market. The main reasons I was so interested in the Engine 27 was the size (only 27mm high!), cooling capacity, and of course the total awesomeness of the concept.
Since I haven't seen any reviews past a few Amazon comments I have thrown together the following mess of a review; take it as you will.
Outline of equipment:

• Case: Lian-Li PC-Q25
• Fans: 140mm Noctua front, 120mm Noctua top
• PSU: Corsair SF450
• Motherboard: ASRock Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac
• CPU: Intel i6500
  
• RAM: 2x 4GB GSkill DDR4 3200
• GPU: Powercolor R9 380

At idle nothing is running on the machine sans Speccy (for temps/info).
Under load the machine is running Prime95 with the following settings:

Airflow comes in the front, is blocked pretty heavily by the HDD cage, then flows out the top of the case right above the motherboard; the SF450's fan doesn't spin during the entire test due to the minimal fan noise configuration so that is not considered when addressing the airflow.

Cryorig C7 install:

PSU install:

Here's the Cryorig C7 idle info:

And here's the Cryorig C7 load info:

Thermaltake Engine 27 install:

Thermaltake Engine 27 idle info:

Thermaltake Engine 27 load info:

As you can see this configuration has the two coolers running at near-identical load temps, but at idle the Engine 27 pulls ahead (understandably most won't care about the idle temps, but it's really the only difference I can note).

I will be transferring my setup into my Dan-A4 once received, and since I was going to use the Engine 27 in that case (due to its equivalent cooling capacity and WOW factor) I wanted to do a quick comparison before I removed the C7.

Finally, I do not have the equipment, nor the environment (Dell R610 sitting on a shelf right next to me) to determine the ambient noise of either cooler, but I can say I cannot hear either at idle/load speeds with the case side off.

TL;DR
Cryorig C7 and Thermaltake Engine 27 provide near identical cooling/noise, but the Engine 27 is smaller (and way more snazzy).

 

[doyll]

Thanks! Always nice to see this kind of testing.

 

[rgMekanic]

Pretty cool stuff, I was wondering how that thing was gonna perform. I put most everything under water, but I'm wanting to build a mini ITX setup for an HTPC, and was interested in this cooler for it.

 

[CarbonVirus]

Update:
So I started to notice a rather high pitched whining coming from the Engine 27 after a day or so of use (even over the Dell R610 server) and decided to do some further testing in a sound isolated room (as best I could). I determined that due to the design of the cooler they have to balance the "fan" as you balance a car tire, by placing small counter-weights along the fins to adjust the center-mass point. I believe during my installation I moved said clip as I fat-fingered it into place. Since I ordered it through Amazon I was able to easily exchange it and the new cooler has NO whine, and oddly does not have a counter-balance clip either.
As far as cooling goes, this has performed as well (if not better than) the C7 I previously was using.
On the subject of sizing, easiest way I can describe it is to take a standard intel cooler, rip the fan off and then shave ~5mm of height off the top.

TL;DR:
There was a whine, I returned it to Amazon and the new one has no whine (whine caused by imbalance due to fat-fingered install); BE EXTRA CAREFUL DURING INSTALL.