The Alpenföhn Atlas targets micro-ATX and mini-ITX users, with its low 125mm height giving it compatibility with many small form factor cases. It also claims to have no RAM or compatibility issues. It has a dual tower design, with the aluminium fins fed by five copper heatpipes that pass through the copper baseplate. The entire cooler is nickel-plated for a consistent look and the build quality is high.
For your £43, you also get two seven-blade 92mm PWM fans with 80mm mounting holes. Each fan has a neatly braided cable with a splitter connection, so you can power and control both with one header if necessary. You also get a 12V Molex adaptor with a short, braided black cable and two 7V Molex adaptors for low noise operation. However, these adaptors come with ugly exposed cables.
Mounting the Atlas involves fitting a universal metal backplate on all sockets except LGA2011 ones. Attaching the two mounting arms to the motherboard is easy, but getting the cooler onto them, especially inside a chassis, was fiddly. There’s a locking bar with pre-attached, spring-loaded screws, which is good, but once you’ve secured one screw – even a little – the second one is difficult to align.
The supplied fan clips are as fiddly as usual, but they’ll be fitted after a few attempts. One fan sits between the towers and another on either the front or rear. Using the rear mount avoids RAM slots on most motherboards, but on LGA2011 systems, both the front and rear positions interfere with RAM slots, so low-profile DIMMs may be necessary. Also, the rear position is so far back that using it may require you to remove your exhaust fan, depending on your case.
At full speed, the Atlas is capable for its size, offering temperatures that aren’t too far off an average all-in-one liquid cooler and also better than Noctua’s NH-D9L, albeit only by 1°C. The fan noise is noticeably audible with both fans spinning at this speed, however, which is a shame; at 7V, where it’s far quieter, the performance falls apart and both our overclocked CPUs hit their thermal limit.
The Atlas is certainly a well-made cooler, but it’s difficult to recommend next to Noctua’s excellent NH-D9L. The price for both coolers is similar, but Noctua’s effort is smaller in every dimension and it can still cope with overclocked, high-end CPUs at low fan speeds. MATTHEW LAMBERT
VERDICT
A solid cooler in some regards, but it struggles to cool overclocked CPUs at low fan speeds.
SPECIFICATIONS
Compatibility Intel: LGA775, LGA1366, LGA115x, LGA2011(-v3) AMD: Socket AM3(+), AM2(+), FM2(+), FM1
Weight 650g
Materials Copper, aluminium
Size (mm) 105 x 140 x 125 (W x D x H)
Fans 2 x 92mm
Stated noise 8-24.3 dB(A) (per fan)