Alpenfohn Brocken ECO Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

The Alpenfohn Brocken ECO has been put through our testing to see if it can handle an overclocked 4770k and it has passed. Now it is time for a quick recap to wrap everything up.

Starting off with the design it is very basic, which isn’t a bad thing. The design it has works and actually does quite well for the size of the cooler and what it is. I have always been a believer that direct contact heatpipes do help to dissipate heat a bit quicker and more evenly and as such reduce CPU temperatures a bit, especially when at full load when it matters. The Brocken ECO is designed to be a standard tower cooler than can accommodate up to 2 fans in a push pull configuration.

Touching on the performance side of things let’s remember the results from our acoustics benchmark. For this as always I had my trusty dB meter out and monitored how much noise the system generated, there were no other fans or anything installed for this so it gives us a good idea of how loud or quiet the cooler will be. The Brocken ECO was almost noiseless at idle and even at full 12v speeds it was one of the quietest coolers/fans we here at Play3r have seen, only being beaten out by coolers costing over twice as much. This is a great feat in itself and speaks volumes on what Alpenfohn wants to and can accomplish with their products.

In terms of thermal performance the Brocken Eco is rather impressive. It is not meant to be a top of the line all out CPU cooler, instead more so a budget friendly cooler. When taking a look at the idle benchmarks things don’t look so promising for the Brocken ECO. However, when looking at the results from the benchmarks under load and it becomes immediately apparent this is where the Brocken ECO shines. When testing it on my 4770K at 4.5GHZ with 1.3v pumping through it the Brocken ECO lands itself almost smack dab right in the middle of the results, this is very pleasing to see.

When considering the price, which is just under £25 here in the UK if purchasing from Overclockers UK you really can’t go wrong. This is a smaller compact cooler that can tame the beast that is an overclocked 4770K and do it well. The Brocken ECO offers amazing value for the price and from my personal experience, will be hard to find something that matches it so well. Also consider the face there is room to add a second fan to this for even better performance and the value just looks better and better.

When it comes down to it the Alpenfohn Brocken is a small cooler that packs quite a punch! If you are looking for a more budget friendly cooler but still want it to have the ability to keep and overclocked CPU under control the Brocken ECO may be the one for you, if nothing else is definitely worth having a look at.

I would like to thank Alpenfohn for sending the Brocken ECO in for review and look forward to seeing more from them in the future.