Thermaltake Commander FT and Riing 12 Review – Cooling on a Whole New Level!

INSTALLATION

The installation of the Riing case fans and the Commander FT touch screen fan controller could appear to be a daunting task for some, but take it from us … it is much easier than you would think!

While our installation took longer than expected, mainly because we got caught up in our spring cleaning, the installation of the Riing 12 Case Fan is exceptionally easy. Just unscrew the old case fans and screw in the new ones. For our install, we also threw the Riing 12’s onto our Corsair H110 All-In-One radiator.

The Commander FT touch screen controller was also very easy to install. It mounts in the front panel of your pc chassis. We mounted our sample at the top for easy access to the controls. Once screwed in, you simply connect the 4-pin molex power cable to your PSU, and connect it to the case fans and you are away to the races.

TECHNOLOGY X TESTING PROTOCOL

At Technology X, we test our cooling devices slightly different depending upon the device’s marketed purpose.  Our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your device is top-notch.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.

AIDA64

In order to test our CPU cooler, we’ll be running a CPU stress test and monitoring our temperatures using AIDA64, which is a great utility for benchmarking, testing the stability of, and monitoring your system.

COOLING PERFORMANCE

To test our cooler, we ran AIDA64’s ‘System Stability Test’ for 1 hour and recorded the highest temperature reached on any CPU core. We also monitored the motherboard temperature to assess chassis fan efficiency.

The interior ambient temperature according to our Commander FT, was between 79 and 83F.

As you can see above, our Asus motherboard had an average temperature of 28C, peaking at 29C. We found that during the stability test, our Riing fans at 1700 RPM, there were no concerns regarding temperatures. Even the CPU only reached a max temperature of 50C. A huge thumbs up in our books!