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Six For The Road
The Cooler Master V6GT is a follow-up to the V6. The main difference is an additional LED strip on the V6GT, which comes in three colors of red, blue or purple. Pressing the button which bears the Cooler Master logo at the top will switch the LED color. Besides this, the V6 and the V6GT seem identical in terms of specifications. Like the V6, the V6GT has a copper base heatsink with six heatpipes extending out and into the array of aluminum fins, with two 120mm fans on either side of the fins.
Installation Woes
Being a universal processor cooler, the V6GT comes with quite an assortment of screws, backplates and retention plates. The installation guide proves reasonably useful in answering our queries, but unfortunately, the process itself was a bit tricky. First, we had to find the Intel specific retention plates (two of them) and adjust them to fit our test system, which was a Socket LGA1366 board.
Next, we mounted the two retention plates to our motherboard, using a backplate and four screws. This is when we noticed a glaring design issue. It seems that one of the retention plates will interfere with the LGA1366 release catch for the processor. We couldn't remove our processor once these retention plates are installed. And there was no question of us changing the alignment of the retention plates to avoid the catch, since that would then affect the direction of the cooling fan once the heatsink was completely installed.
In short, if you're changing your Core i7 processor to another, you'll have to remove the heatsink entirely, including the retention and backplates. Typically, one would just need to remove the fan with the heatsink base. Now, that's not too bad for us, since our chassis comes with a hole cut out from the bottom of the motherboard tray, allowing us access to the bottom of the board. But for those who do not have such a feature in their chassis, or a removable motherboard tray, you'll have to remove the entire motherboard out of the chassis to change the processor.
Additionally, one has to remove the two 120mm fans from the cooler before installing and the same applies when removing the heatsink fan. Given the space around the motherboard socket after installing the V6GT (as seen below), we have to say removing the heatsink will be equally troublesome. The casing used in our testbed is a Lian Li PC-P50R if you're interested to know.
Final Thoughts
At an estimated retail price of around S$99, the Cooler Master V6GT is one of the more expensive air-cooled models in the market. The company's own V8 cooler costs less, albeit being an older model. We see the V6GT as a luxury for those who fancy the LED lights and the design. In practical terms, the V6GT didn't strike us as a cooler that we'll use every day; it was just too much trouble installing it in the typical no-frills chassis. If you buy into its 'muscular engine' design and have the chassis to fit its bling, then be our guest. (Text by Vincent Chang)
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TECH GUIDES
