Conclusion

The AC4G is a nice looking product with easy installation, and it offers an interesting design. However, I was disappointed in its cooling abilities as it did not live up to my expectations – and it was only a tad better than stock cooling with my Barton 2500+! It would perhaps have performed much better with a slower CPU with less wattage output, but why test a cooler of today on a CPU from yesterday?

There are many normal air coolers out there that offer better cooling for half the price, and I see no reason for people to spend large sums on the AC4G.

Air cooling has once again proven that it is not suffienct for cooling a TEC.

Note From Spode: Using air coolers with peltiers has been around for a while, a while back you would get Alpha PEP coolers bundled with peltiers over at the now deceased Leufkens Technologies. The general conclusion then was that air cooling could not handle peltiers all that well, why should this change now after processors have increased in heat? Aside from that, I feel that a thinner cold plate would have helped performance considerably. It would also be nice to have seen the peltier arrive potted and with some sort of condensation prevention, for safety reasons. Luckily becuase of the less than impressive performance of this product, this shouldn't be a problem.

Pros:

• Original design
• Good finish
• Low noise in quiet mode
• Easy installation
• Controls case fan speed
• Good documentation

Cons:

• Poor performance
• High price
• Doesn’t draw power from the motherboard (could be pro or con..)

I would like to thank Active Cool for sending out this unit. As the AC4G indeed is an interesting product, I hope they take our results into account and produce a better product.

Allan Nielsen

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