SilentiumPC Fortis 3 RGB (HE1425) Air Cooler – Review

A Closer Look

So, as this is a high-performance air cooler, it is (as you might have guessed) rather large. What do we think about the individual components that go into this design, though? Well, let’s take a closer look!

Well, firstly (and admittedly not a huge point) the main cooler itself comes presented within a plastic molded case. This is really excellent to see as often they are just ‘wedged’ into the card packaging.

This is, however, highly reassuring that when your SilentiumPC Fortis 3 arrives, it should be in perfect condition.

Contact Plate

Starting with the heat pipes, as you can see in the image below the Fortis 3 has a total of 5 leading from each side of the contact plate. This is slightly less than the usual you would expect from a high-performance air cooler with most having at least 6.

The contact plate is nice and large meaning that, regardless of your processor, it should provide an excellent smooth contact surface. It is, perhaps a little disappointing that you can (just) see where the heat pipes make contact, but in terms of performance, this shouldn’t make any notable difference.

Radiator

Of all of the aspects of the design (putting the RGB to one side for a moment) the stand-out thing that grabs your attention is the highly unusual V shape to the radiator.

Although I have seen similar designs used in the past, this one is without a doubt one of the most eye-catching. Particularly with it’s all-black design and silver highlights to the fin edges.

Although quite bulky, the Fortis 3 is certainly not as big as some of the many other ‘high-end’ performance cards and, depending on how you want to fit it, it could certainly look very attractive in a system build.

Fan

With this cooler, you are provided with one of SilentiumPC’s own RGB capable fans. The design itself is fairly standard (and one we’ve seen SilentiumPC use before in other cooling products.

Overall

What SilentiumPC has tried to achieve here (with more than a little success) is to create a high-performance air-cooler that has more than a few stylish choices that makes it look genuinely good, be the lights on or off.

Being a large cooler, however, often these can be a bit tricky to install. So how did that go? – Let’s find out!