SilverStone NT01 Pro Low Profile HTPC CPU Cooler Review

SilverStone’s NT01 Pro costs around £42 in the United Kingdom. Considering you’d have to pay another £10 minimum to get a couple of 80mm or 70mm fans for this cooler, that brings the total cost to at least £50 if you want fans. Now I don’t know about you, but paying £50 for a CPU cooler is a lot. When you fork out that much money you expect to get something really good for your money. Now maybe I have missed something really important here, but I think £50 for this product is slightly uncompetitive. In an ideal world, looking at the performance figures this gives, its size and its intended uses, I would of liked to see this come to market at £45 including two 80mm fans.

I know the whole point of this cooler is to provide low profile cooling for HTPCs and SFF systems but the long and short of it is that you can get smaller CPU coolers for a lower price that perform better. The double-irony of this situation is that SilverStone themselves are the makers of one of the best low profile CPU coolers we have EVER tested – the SilverStone NT06 Pro. One counter-claim to the criticism that this CPU cooler appears to have poor performance is that it is meant to be used passively. Now this is partially true, SilverStone do say this CPU cooler can be used passively so this is something worth considering. There are specific cases that would benefit from this type of CPU cooler shape – these cases are ones where there isn’t enough space directly above the CPU socket for a CPU cooler and thus you need something that can extend to the side of the CPU socket where more space is available. In this instance I can see the usage for this kind of product, and in that kind of scenario it is probably a decent buy, even if still a bit on the expensive side.

Now as always I will go over my concerns with the product first, then what I liked, before wrapping this review up. My first concern is that the fan mounting system is frustrating. This is compounded by the fact the provided instruction manual is a generic manual intended for the entire Nitrogon/Heligon series, so it doesn’t even instruct you on how to install the fans because this cooler uses a completely different fan mounting system to every other cooler in the series (However, it should be noted that you can now find a digital version of the correct fan manual here). My second concern comes with the fact SilverStone do not provide fans. I understand their response would be “we want to give users the flexibility to have passive operation or choose which fans they would like to use” but ultimately SilverStone can ensure these coolers include 80 or 70mm fans for a very small unit cost increase, probably less than £3 per item, yet for you and me it will cost at least £10 to do the same, so in the end consumers are the ones losing out. If you are going to avoid including fans then you have to reduce the price enough to incorporate the fact consumers need to spend more on fans – and SilverStone haven’t really done that either. Finally my concern comes with the performance. Performance is always judged in relation to the price, size and intended uses, and in relation to those things the performance is at least 3-4 degrees off where it should be, in my opinion.

What I liked about the SilverStone NT01 Pro was that it had extremely high build quality. There are a few companies that stand out in the market place for having exceptional levels of quality, Be Quiet!, Noctua and SilverStone are probably the three best in my opinion. In addition to that the heatsink mounting system was top-notch, the fact you can mount the CPU cooler in four different ways and the mounting system is so easy to use and gives such a secure mount – well it is just excellent and more companies need to use mounting systems like this.

So there you have it, we have come to the end of the review. My understanding of this product is that it is innovative and it did have the potential to be excellent but quite frankly the price and the performance means that this CPU cooler isn’t as good as it could be. Simply put, there are cheaper, better performing and smaller HTPC coolers on the market. If I was to put my money where my mouth in terms of HTPC CPU coolers I’d be buying a SilverStone NT06 Pro, for me this product is just average.