Thermalright SI-100 Review

Thermalright’s SI-100 is a 120mm class low profile CPU cooler, similar to the C14S. The SI-100 is 100mm in height vs. NH-C14S at 115mm.

SPECIFICATIONS

MODELSI-100
DIMENSIONSL: 120 x W: 108 x H: 99.8mm (including 25mm thick fan)
MATERIALS6x 6mm copper heat-pipes, copper base (nickel coated), aluminium cooling fins
COMPATIBILITYIntel: 115X/1200/1700
AMD: AM4/AM5
FANS1x TL-E12B (2000 max.rmp)
RAM CLEARANCE50mm

TEST SYSTEM

Testing is carried out on BC1 Mini v2 (open testbench), using the following hardware, in 20°C ambient room temperature. We noise normalised the cooler fan speed to 35dBA at distance of 50cm. This helps eliminate brute force cooling from higher RPM fans.

CASEBC1 Mini v2 (Open Testbench)
MOTHERBOARDRog Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi (paid link)
CPUR5 7600X / R7 7700X (paid links)
CPU COOLERThermalright SI-100 (paid link)
PSU Extreme 850R (paid link)
RAM32GB Gskill DDR5, 6000MHz, CL30 (paid link)

NOISE

At 70% fan speed, the SI-100’s included 120x25mm fan outputs around 35dBA noise at distance 50cm. It’s not as subjectively quiet as the NF-A12x25 for instance, but is still decent enough fan for price.

THERMAL BENCHMARKS

We use Cinebench R23 multicore (stability test), for period of 30 minutes. This provides worse case scenario for a given CPU. CPU coolers are tested across range of CPU’s for data validation and to reduce risk of errors in testing. This also helps account for variables between CPU platforms.

CONCLUSIONS

Thermalright’s SI-100 is excellent performer, even outpacing the larger, heavier Noctua NH-C14S in our testing. It offers reasonable motherboard and RAM compatibility and is very aggressively priced relatively to thermal performance available.