The stock air coolers supplied with retail processors from Intel and AMD may be fine for the average PC user but, generally speaking, PC enthusiasts have expectations that are well above the ’one size fits all’ approach. Thus, a stock cooler could never hope to satisfy the needs of a budding hardware fanatic.

At one end of the spectrum, noise reduction may be the greatest concern – this is an area where both Intel and AMD have improved dramatically over the years, but their cooling solutions still aren’t as close to silent as possible. The other extreme is the overclockers amongst us, where maximum cooling is required to stop temperatures being the limiting factor in your latest overclocking endeavour.

To some extent, there has been a bit of convergence in the heatsink market over the last few years, as high-performance heatsinks have become much quieter than they used to be (anyone remember running 60mm Delta screamers? – Ed). This is mainly thanks to heatpipe technology, which has enabled heatsink manufacturers to remove heat from the CPU in a more effective manner.

Today, we have a selection of coolers from Asus, Noctua, ThermalFly and Zalman on test. Each of these coolers makes use of heatpipe technology to some extent and whatever your needs are, there should be something here that might be right up your street in this selection.