Thermaltake Contac 29 120mm CPU Cooler

Pros: Cheap, super cool.

Cons: Kinda hard to install bu not THAT bad. If you have 2nd person help you it's no prob. Make sure that it will fit in your case, pretty tall. The rubber fittings that hold fan in place are WAY harder to take out then actually mounting it on the mobo just because they get caught on all the fins while bending them. Make sure you have tweezers or slim pair of pliers handy if mounting different fans.

Other Thoughts: This thing keeps temps lower on a overclocked 1055t then a $50 92mm Zalman that I had 1st hand experience of comparing - given that dual fans are mounted of around 75cfm on to Contac 32. I have not tested it with stock fan. Most defiantly worth $30.

Pros: It gets the job done, i7920 overclock to 3.4 ghz idle temp 41C load 58C.

Cons: This cooler is super duper hard to install.. the fan was right on top of the pin. it also takes a lot of power to actually push the pins all the way in. Even though my temperature dropped about 5 degrees C, it is not worth the installation process. Save you thumbs people because mine is in pain at the moment..

Other Thoughts: i wish i knew a way to detach the fan from the heat sink so pushing in the pins would be easier.

Pros: 120mm fan, Tower Style HS/F, H.D.T cooling,8mm Pipes
Was very quiet when run, no buzzes and no weird noises. It uses the Intel push-pin setup which, unlike many other readers here, i didnt have any problems with. Maybe ive done enough of them that its second nature?!?!? Either way, ive seen alot of complaints about it and tbh, its much ado about nothing. Its kinda like the whole Fermi's a oven and its gonna melt your rig to your desk as it destroys the transformer outside your house hysteria. If youve ever done a intel push pin setup, youll be fine. Dont panic!! lol... I cant speak for the AMD setup though.

Cons: H.D.T. Cooling!!! While H.D.T. Cooling is the wave of the future for air cooling your rigs cpu, you dont want one that has a finish like this. The Contac pipes looked as if they got to maybe a 1000 grit sandpaper and stopped manufactureing. Which means, yes boys and girls, your going to have to lap this cooler!! Theres no way around it!! Yes, the finish is dismel. This is really the only con as far as im concerned, but its a con in the one spot where you dont want a con!! I lapped this thing myself down to a 2000 grit and polishing compound and it gave me decent numbers. I cant imagine how bad it would have performed though if i had just slapped it on the CPU right from the box!! I feel bad for the people that buy this thing and have no technical/modding know how.

Other Thoughts: This unit went on a Asus 650i SLI board with a E6400. The previous HSF unit was a TT Mini-Typhoon all copper cooler. That cooler in a 70f degree room idled at 48c, load at 60c. CPU was o.c. to 3.62. With the Contac 29 it idled at 52c and load at 61. That was after i lapped it also. It might be able to shave a degree or two off if you add another 120mm fan and get some push/pull goin on, which i didnt. For its Price range its a pretty decent unit. If they polished up the H.D.T. base straight from factory to a perfectly flat mirror finish they might shave a couple more degrees off. Also, id love to see a all copper version of this!! I think that would make a big difference in its performance. But if i had it my way, all air coolers would be made from copper and silver and thats it!!! The reason for the 3 star rating is, 5 stars would mean its perfect, and well, nothing is perfect. Plus, i had to shave a star for the horrible factory base lapping.

Pros: Excellent cooler. Dramatic reduction in CPU temperatures. Installation looks like it's probably not bad for AMD CPUs.

Cons: As the reviews say, this is an extremely effective cooler. However the installation is absolutely horrible for an Intel CPU. It uses the same push pins that the stock cooler uses. This should make installation easy because you don't even have to remove the board from the case. However it takes a ridiculous amount of pressure to push those things down far enough so you can twist and lock them. And the way the screwdriver slot is shaped, you can only use a screwdriver to unlock it, not to lock.

When I was installing, I got all the way to the fourth push connector and the thing broke on me. BROKE! And to make things worse, it broke on me when it was pushed down as hard as I could. And the part that broke, of course, was the thin little pin that goes through the center of the grips to make them spread and grab the mobo. In other words, this plastic push connector was now STUCK to the motherboard!

Other Thoughts: I ended up having to take out all my cards, unplug all the drives and components, and remove the mobo from the case. In other words, I had to do everything that I was hoping to avoid by purchasing the Contac 29 in the first place!

Then I had to work on removing the plastic pin, which took some time. The only good thing was that the 4 push connectors on the Contac 29 are identical to the ones on the stock cooler, so I was able to cannibalize it.

Finally, time to install the Contac 29, again. But this time it should be easy, right? It's all open and on top of a table with no case in the way and all that. Nope. Ended up needing another person to help. I was pushing down on the coolers support arm while pushing up on the mobo while the other person was pushing on the push connector and locking it into place.

If the cooler didn't work so amazingly well once installed, I would have given this product 1 egg for sure.

Pros: NEVER HOTTER THAN 40c EVER i overclocked my amd 965 to 3.8 ghz and i game like crazy!

Cons: it is freaking huge i have a c0oler~m@st3r storm sniper case and it is and inch away from the complete other side of the case

Other Thoughts: i gave it four due to size but other than that its good, but know that if u get it ull need a huge case full to extended atx case like li@n l! Co0l3r M@st3r

Pros: Great air flow also can mount second fan, Make sure that the fan itself has open mounting brackets, See cons for more details. Other than the minor let down of the fans I bought not fitting it I'm happy dropped the temp from 45-50 to 32 constant

Cons: The rubber mounting gaskets for adding the second fan are easy to use if you have a 120 mm fan with open corners the fan pack I purchased, a cooler master 4 pack of 120 mm fans. Has enclosed corners making the mounting of the second fan impossible at the moment. If I would have read into this I would have made the purchase of an additional 120 mm fan to fit, but since I didn't I will have to add it to the upgrade wish list. Also Be very careful while mounting this thing the heat sink itself is very fragile so use caution.

Other Thoughts: I really like it other than the way it is positioned, instead of aiming front to back in my case it's up and down, minor but the case fan on top blowing out will help with some of the heat

Pros: low price works as good as water cooling but usses les power then water cooling no pump one less fan
keep my q6600 over clocked to 3.1 gigs 95 deg f at idle, 120 deg. f 100% load running prime 95 64 bit i bet all this desine type cooler work great if propertly installed

Cons: none
and i agree with the other wirte who said the guys saying these type of coolers are junk are ignerent and shild not call there level high, most times when they get a bad read on temp its due to improperly seted or improperly gressed coolers

Other Thoughts: some seam to have to much troble with the push pins the esy way to do it is install cooler on the board prier to instaling the board push the pin on at the same time as pushing on the board from the other side make shure the pin with platic is inserted prier to pushing the black part on

Pros: The option to add another 120mm fan is a great feature. The cooler is very large, bigger than a powersupply with a second fan, but very light. Works great with M2N32SLI-Deluxe. Also fits into my Enermax case. I also like the soft rubber fan mounts--worked great for me.

Cons: The construction feels a little flimsy, the copper heatpipe feels very thin, but not too bad for the price. A little hard to install because the metal clip for AM2 is a bit hard to secure if you have limited space to work with.

Other Thoughts: Infinitely better than stock cooler at a reasonable price. My CPU is Phenom 940BE, clocked at 3.6GHz with 1.37V. 62C under full load 30C in my room right now (yeah today is a very hot day in upstate NY).

Pros: First I would like to say how awesome Newegg is with shipping. I ordered this yesterday afternoon and I only paid for 3day ground and It was at my mailbox this morning.

So I just installed this CPU cooler and I immediately noticed a difference. The temp went from 53C to 40C idle.
Also it's not as loud as I thought it was going to be

Cons: I took an egg off because how it sits in my case and like other said poor instructions.

It blows the air to the top of the case, where in my option it should shoot it out the back. The intake fan is pulling the hot air off the top of my video card and then pushing it through the fins (doesn't make any sense).

When I first pulled it out of the box I put the extra fan I had on the other side of the fins and went to install it, but when i finally went to shut the other side of the case, the extra fan was hitting my psu so I had to take it off. Those little rubber pins are really hard to get out of the fan once you push them in all the way.
The extra fan was no big deal so I didn't take off an extra egg because of it.

Other Thoughts: Like others have said this CPU cooler is defiantly large.
It barley fit inside my Raidmax Aztec case. I actually had to cut the side fan hole out and mount the fan on the outside of the case so that the cooler had enough room, otherwise it would have been prevented the fan from turning.
So:
AMD Phenom 9850 Quad core running at 3MHz idle sits about 40C down from 53.5C

Pros: This is a beautiful unit, superb machining, broad socket compatability, and can be upgraded with a second fan. Copper heat pipes make direct contact with the cpu. Very light, minimizing any torque on a vertically mounted mobo. It's affordable, and best of all, it's Thermaltake.

Cons: This thing is TALL (160mm). It's a good thing the case I installed this in is over 8 1/4 inches wide. Even still, I just barely managed to fit it in.
As tall as it is, there are bigger, like the Frio. Honestly, I don't know how the manufacturers like Tt expect us to fit these into the case.
This unit will NOT fit in a standard 7" wide case, not even close.
BE VERY CAREFUL which case you are using before purchasing this one. It will require an 8 inch (or more) wide case.
I did some looking around, and found very few PC cases (or even server cases, for that matter) that are wide enough for this cooler.

The "automatic fan speed" requires a PWM-capable system and configuring of the bios, so buy a fan controller if you don't know how to do that.

Other Thoughts: The IN WIN Maelstrom Full Tower case, 8.86 inches wide, with bottom-mount for the psu, wide enough to fit this unit, and long enough for a GTX280 or two. Not a real looker, in my opinion, but it's big. really big.

Mountain Mod cases would be ideal, but costly.

The ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro Rev.2 92mm has a comparable design, but with a lower profile (127mm) which will fit a broader selection of cases. It has a 92mm fan, as compared to the Tt Contac 29's 120mm fan.