Author: Hal Thompson
Here's the spec:
Heatsink:
| Inc. Fan
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What comes in the box:
Inside the box you find everything you need to set up and use the AR06, from the thermal paste to the instruction manual to the mounting hardware for both intel and AMD.
The instruction manual is as ever both easy to use and made of a rugged construction, I would assume it to be made of cotton paper or something similar in strength. You also get four screws for mounting either the intel or AMD included brackets onto the bottom of the cooler, Four sets of nuts and bolts to create the mounting threads and finally your four mounting hex nuts with included rubber pads. After all of the mounting hardware is covered, let's also not forget you get a tube of SilverStone's thermal paste to go with the cooler too.
Design:
The Argon AR06 cooler is the larger brother to the AR05 standing at 43mm high without the fan compared to the AR05's 21.7mm. It's also unsurprising to see the AR06 actually resemble many other low-profile coolers on the market today, most notably the Noctua NH-L9i and the AR05/6's predecessor, the AR04. Does this slightly larger and better featured cooler make those aforementioned coolers look like old relics? We will definitely see in this review.
| Going around the cooler we see that it is very very simple and there isn't that much to look at. With a very square design, the only distinctive feature on the AR06 is this beautiful four heatpipe system that features direct contact to the CPU and curves out and up in a paired pattern that looks absolutely great in lighting and thanks to the small colour pallette, stands out perfectly. |  |
Other than the four 6mm heatpipes, there isn't much else to talk about from an aesthetic perspective but interestingly the fan mounts are removable and have the SilverStone branding across them. This is on both sides of the cooler and goes well with the heatpipes.
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At 16 fins per inch the AR06 is quite a dense cooler and is exactly what we would expect from such a small and compact cooler. They are also relatively thick so bending and warping won't really be seen
Photo Gallery:
Here is all the product shots taken for the review, plus some that haven't been used. Have a look through to get a good feel for the product!
Performance:
Test Bench:
| Component: Case Processor Cooler Thermal Paste Fans Motherboard Ram Power Supply Storage | Product: (Reviews linked) BitFenix Prodigy Intel Core i5 4570 Silverstone TD02 Noctua NT-H1 Silverstone AP123 Gigabyte Z87N-WIFI Corsair Vengeance LP 2x4GB Cooler Master V450S Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Sponsor: BitFenix HZmedia Silverstone Noctua Silverstone Gigabyte HZmedia HZmedia HZmedia |
Results:
Stock:
As you can tell the results are pretty much as you would expect, almost dead on what I expected at least. SilverStone's own NT06-Pro beat the AR06 by a comfortable 8.6 degrees but that is a large cooler with a much louder 120mm fan on and we lost use of our expansion slot. On the other side of it we saw a 3.3 degree drop over Noctua's L9i 35mm tall cooler and with no downside other than height clearance (35mm compared to 58mm) which won't be a problem at all in most PC cases, this seems like the better option for most.
Conclusion:
The AR06 is without a doubt one of the more impressive coolers I've reviewed or used over the past few months. Not because it's outrageously good at cooling but because as a complete package it offers outstanding value for money. Pretty much guaranteed for compatibility with all of your other components and an almost 10 degree drop in temperature over the stock cooler, the AR06 really showed to me that it was fully capable of supporting anyone looking to make a powerful PC within pretty much any compact case. This helps by really allowing our imagination to take over when it comes to designing systems and pushes the boundaries on what's possible.
Colour choices also comes into play here within our conclusion as Silverstone's new fans featuring the blue and white/grey shades go really well with the copper heatpipes. The lack of nickel plating here worked out great as well because the copper really lit up under our case lighting and did not look out of place at all as the centrepiece within our comparatively large BitFenix Prodigy test bench case.
In summary, the SilverStone Argon AR06 Low-Profile CPU cooler is an amazing product that gives us great cooling relative to it's size and, thanks to it's size and complete lack of any additional connected components like you would see with an AIO water cooling loop, lets you comfortably forget about your CPU area in regards to compatibility, letting you go wild with your imagination for everything else. This is an awesome cooler for anyone looking to build a compact system, and even moreso for someone looking to do this but with a bespoke or modded case. This cooler won our Bronze medal, being highly rated in all areas other than total all out cooling performance, of which it received a great rating relative to it's size, however it was held back slightly by it's relatively under supported fan size compared to the 120mm or 140mm standards.
Colour choices also comes into play here within our conclusion as Silverstone's new fans featuring the blue and white/grey shades go really well with the copper heatpipes. The lack of nickel plating here worked out great as well because the copper really lit up under our case lighting and did not look out of place at all as the centrepiece within our comparatively large BitFenix Prodigy test bench case.
In summary, the SilverStone Argon AR06 Low-Profile CPU cooler is an amazing product that gives us great cooling relative to it's size and, thanks to it's size and complete lack of any additional connected components like you would see with an AIO water cooling loop, lets you comfortably forget about your CPU area in regards to compatibility, letting you go wild with your imagination for everything else. This is an awesome cooler for anyone looking to build a compact system, and even moreso for someone looking to do this but with a bespoke or modded case. This cooler won our Bronze medal, being highly rated in all areas other than total all out cooling performance, of which it received a great rating relative to it's size, however it was held back slightly by it's relatively under supported fan size compared to the 120mm or 140mm standards.
Verdict:
| Performance: Build Quality: Features & Compatibility: Aesthetics & Packaging: Value For Money: | 20/40 14/15 13/15 9/10 18/20 | Rating: 74/100 |
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