Conclusion

Animal shaped heatsinks appear to come at a premium. At plus £30 for a heatsink, they aren’t great value. However, your looking at silent heatsinks, which even have red LED’s which add a little colour to an otherwise dark box.

I would give the passive cooler a miss due to its inability to keep your (AM2) CPU at a reasonable temperature, but the other two coolers seem like candidates for silent PC’s. You aren’t going to get much of an overclock out of them, but they will help you work in peace.

If you want performance (and a couple of quid in your pocket) pick the ThermalTake Max Orb, but if you want silence, pick the BTF80 or BTF90. Leave the BTF95 alone unless you have a lower spec CPU, a low end Core 2 Duo, optimised case air flow or are content with just watching DVD's.

I'd like to thank QuietPC for providing us with the cooler.

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