Battle of Coolers! (for Q6600 but in general too)

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Kent10

This review was not particularly good. Are these fans on backwards or can you even tell. Does it really depend on the direction they spin? You would assume the experienced reviewers would know the proper installation but the directions were not clear to me (I'm inexperienced) when I put mine together and I looked at Rich's review to be sure I was doing it correctly since I had the same fans that he used and he got great results.

AnandTech: Cooler Master GeminII: Performer or Poser?

I normally really like Anandtech, but frankly some numbers just seem totally wrong in those graphs. There's a lot of coolers that I tested myself in the list and that just NEVER competed with the big dogs.
Also, they don't even specify what fan they used on the Thermalright coolers, and "standard medium tower" case just doesn't cut it. Obviously you'll get different results from various cases. No word on ambient room temp either.
I'd take those graphs with a grain of salt, even if a 1 degree celsius difference is technically "nothing" unless you're going for some extreme overclock.