German cooling specialists Alphenfohn may have been a little quiet of late but they're aiming to stand up an be heard this week with the release of a brand new CPU cooler, the Atlas. Designed chiefly for micro-ATX and mini-ITX systems that nonetheless require some fairly meaty cooling, Atlas is a twin-tower design incorporating dual-92mm fans and an innovative asymmetric tower profile in order to push cooling as far as possible within this form factor.

Atlas stands just 125mm tall - far lower than most twin-tower coolers and suitable for a huge range of PC chassis - but retains maximum memory compatibility thanks to asymmetric towers, maximizing the use of space. Furthermore, at only 105mm wide the design doesn't encroach on the PCI-Express slots - a critical feature for mini-ITX builds seeking to add a discrete GPU. The entire design (including both fans) is 140mm long, and makes use of five 6mm heatpipes to speed heat away from the base plate.



Another promising feature is the convex surface of the heatsink's base plate, which improves thermal contact with most CPUs and especially Intel's Haswell processors. Atlas makes use of a mounting mechanism that supports the whole gamut of sockets: 2011, 2011-v3, 1366, 115x, 775, AM3(+), AM3, AM2(+), AM2, FM1 and FM2; additionally the included ultra-high-performance Permafrost thermal grease guarantees the best possible cooling, no matter the CPU.

Technical Specifications





Atlas is available to preorder now from Overclockers.co.uk, priced at £42.95 inc. V.A.T. At this price point it seems be to quite competitive with other high performance mATX/ITX coolers on the market, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating (or more precisely, the reviews). More information can be found at Alpenfohn.de.