Today I will be looking at the Thermaltake Volcano 9 CoolMod CPU cooler. My first impression of this cooler was great.  I have had some good luck with the larger coolers lately and I was really looking forward to reviewing the Volcano 9. I will be putting this cooler up against the Spire 5F271B1M3 FalconRock that I reviewed in January.

• ASUS A7N8X Deluxe Motherboard
• AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53GHz @ 1.83GHz
• 2X 256MB PC3200 DDR

Here are some photos of what you get with the Volcano 9. In the 3rd photo from left to right, you get as follows: instructions, thermal paste & thermal pad, temperature sensor, adjustable manual fan speed control, 3 pin to 4 pin Molex adaptor. As you can see from the last photo there are a lot of wires coming off of the fan and CoolMod.

The heat sink itself is quite beefy. I liked the chrome wind deflector on it but it collects fingerprints easily. The bottom of the heat sink has a copper core, which if you have read a few of my reviews I like these better then solid copper heat sinks. The heat sink is attached with a 3 prong clip and is surprisingly easy to install. It's not as tight as some heat sinks are.

The Smart Case Fan II is probably the single most advanced fan I have seen in the PC industry. The S.C.F.II runs at 1300 to 4800 RPM at 17dB to 48 dB at least these are the published specs. I ran this fan with the fan controller on the Vantec Nexus Multi Function Panel and I was able to run this case fan at 5200 RPM

• Full Speed 4800 RPM

• Temp. Control, Fan Speed Auto Control Setting: 1300 RPM at 20 ºc~ 4800 RPM at 55 ºc
• Temp. Sensor attach to CPU or Heat sink

• Adjustable Manual Fan Speed Control From 1300 RPM to 4800 RPM

There's not much I can say about the CoolMod other then I wouldn't waste your money. It looks cool but it has some major downsides. First off the wires are not long enough to hide very well as you can see in picture number 2, also you loose the use of the LEDs in front of your case.

The CoolMod is made up of a plastic structure that is attached to the fan by the same screws that hold the fan to the heat sink. There are 4 LED's 2X blue and 2X red. The Blue LED's are powered by the power header on your motherboard and the red LED's are powered by the hard drive activity header on your motherboard. Its actually a really cool effect but I think Thermaltake needs to make the wires longer and find a way where you can use the front LED's on your case as well.

The Volcano 9 really did perform well. I ran the tests at low RPM (2900) and high RPM (5200) I got the load Temperatures by letting the computer run SETI at home for a few hours. Lets see how it did.

The temperatures where close but the Volcano 9 won and if you account for the features that the Smart Case Fan II supports I give this CPU cooler an A+. It would be a great performer any AMD Athlon/Duron combination.

In the past few months I have had the chance to look at quite a few CPU coolers. The bottom line in testing is after your done, which one do you put back on the system. The system I use for testing is my LAN box which was built for 100% gaming.  When it comes to cooling I want the best that I can possibly get. The other day I had to test about 4 coolers while watching a Sacramento Kings game and when the dust cleared, and I put my system back together the Volcano 9 found a new home replacing the Spire cooler I was using before. So the bottom line is, I'm not only giving this cooler a great review but I plan on using it my self (Until something better comes along of coarse). The only problem I had with this cooler was the CoolMod. I didn't like it at all so when I attached the cooler for the last time to my CPU, I removed the CoolMod and attached a finger guard.

• Great cooling
• Great craftsmanship
• Smart Case Fan II
• 3 different temperature control functions
• 3 prong clip
• Quiet operation when RPM's are low

• Wires to short on CoolMod
• Loss of front LED's with CoolMod