Prolimatech Megahalems Red Series Review

Brand: Prolimatech
Model: Megahalems Red Series + 2 x NoiseBlocker NB-eLoop Fan B12-PS-120mm PWM
RRP: £53 (At time of the review) NB-eLoop Fans = £32 (At time of the review)

Prolimatech are a relatively new company in the cooling industry. Having been founded in 2008 by a group of enthusiasts, with a total of 22 years of experience in the field of computer thermal solutions, they’re certainly one of the younger companies in the industry. They aim to provide the end user with high quality, high performance thermal solutions for both the overclocker and enthusiast alike.

Today, I am going to be taking a look at one of their latest coolers which is still dubbed under the Megahalems name. This one in particular comes from the Red Series which as the name clearly suggests, it’s red. This particular cooler is available in three colours – black, blue and red. Prolimatech have done this so that the consumer will have a choice as to what colour will best math the system it is going into. For example, a red one (such as this one) would look great within an ASUS ‘ROG’ styled build.

This is a high-end air cooler with a high-end price to match. It comes in at roughly £50 to £55 at most reputable retailers but you need to be aware that this is without a fan. You have to buy a fan on top which can quickly drive up the prices. Our sample has been provided with two Noise Blocker fans which will be tested during this review as well.

However, with that slight negative out of the way, let’s take a look at the specifications and then find out how easy it is to mount as well as how it performs.

The packaging in which the Red Series Megahalem ships in is an all-white box with red accents. There is such a contrast between the white and red colouring that it will most definitely catch your eye in a shop. On the front of the box is a very distinguishable Megahalems name tag as well as the colour which it is in the top right-hand-side, in case it wasn’t obvious enough with the colouring on the box. On the front there is also the logo which looks like something out the Transformer series of movies, or at least it does to me. Around the sides of the box is a load of information about the cooler. These things range from the coolers dimensions, its weight, the materials used as well as the socket compatibility.

Opening up the box reveals the cooler and its protective packaging, as well as the accessories box which is on the right-hand-side. The cooler itself looks to be very well protected against any form of knock during transit due to the amount of space between the box and the cooler. The foam keeping it in place is very sturdy too which ensures minimal movement, if any at all. There is also a plastic sheet over the cooler which is somewhat unnecessary but a nice touch nonetheless.

Accessories are aplenty in this particular cooler, as you’d expect. It comes with all of the mounting gear for every Intel socket from LGA775 all the way through to LGA2011. Here’s a list of the included accessories:

(Intel) Backplate
Aluminum Mounting Plate
(Intel) Aluminum Strip Adapter
(Intel) LGA775 Backplate Spacer
(Intel) O-ring
(Intel) Rivet Nut
(Intel) Double End Stud With Nut
(Intel) Screw Nut
(Intel) Spring-loaded Screw
LGA 2011 Mounting Kit
Thermal Compound (PK-2)
Megahalems 14025/12025 Fan Wire Clip
Megahalems 12025 Fan Wire Clip
Megahalems 14025 Fan Wire Clip

When I first opened up the box and saw the deep red colouring of this heatsink, it was a surprise at first as I hadn’t seen it prior to this, but it instantly grew on me. The colour is something which you rarely see in the cooling market but it is nice to see different aesthetics.

There are a total of six heat pipes on each radiator which are 6mm in diameter. Couple that with an efficient design, and you should have a great cooler on your hands. The base of the cooler is milled to perfection to make the contact between the IHS and cooler as good as possible.

The Prolimatech Megahalems is most definitely not a small cooler. Once you’ve coupled it with either one or two fans, it is quite the beast. With our sample there were two fans provided by Noise Blocker. The fans are of the NB-eLoop variety to be more specific. They are very low noise emitting fans and they are what I will be using on this cooler for the testing stages of this review.

The fan has a very good quality feel to it and the picture doesn’t really do it justice as the white is very difficult to capture. It’s a crisp white blade with a black frame with grey rubber mountings to further reduce noise caused by vibrations.

You may be wondering where the cable is for the fan. Well, that’s something special and unique to this design. It actually has a very short power cable and Noise Blocker have given the consumer a choice between two lengths of cable rather than one standard length which is a brilliant idea in my eyes. It adds that extra bit of flexibility as we all know that we don’t need a massively long cable to go from the back of our case to the header on the motherboard, literally five centimetres away; Kudos, NB! You also get a set of screws, some rubber mounts to yet again further decrease the vibrations going into the case and finally a set of locking nuts to secure the fan into place.

Before I even started with this cooler, I was told by Jake that this cooler was probably one of the easiest coolers to mount that they’ve ever heard about. I was eager to find out whether that was indeed the case and in all honesty, it was very easy. It’s all about being methodical and doing it as per instructions, although it is hard to go wrong in all fairness.

Installation of the Megahalems begins with the backplate and four rivet nuts. It’s a simple process of finding which holes are for your socket and then putting them in place. When they are in the correct position, you lock them down with the O-rings which are supplied with the cooler. Once that is done, you hold it in place whilst you flip over the motherboard and install the four double ended studs.

From there, you proceed to install the two brackets which will be used to secure the cooler into its final resting position. These are also secured by installing the four screw nuts to ensure that it is fully locked down. You can choose how you wish to install these, either vertically or horizontally. I chose to install them vertically as I like my coolers to blow out the back of the chassis, rather than sucking in hot air from the GPU beneath.

To finish the mounting procedure, you then install the final aluminium cross brace which then secures the entire cooler with two spring-loaded screws.

This is where I must give my praise to Prolimatech, for actually including something which is yet to be implemented on other manufacturer’s designs. The base of the cooler has two holes in which the cross brace slots into, to ensure that it does not move or swivel once it is installed. It’s great to finally see this implemented and I hope that others soon join in too.

Test Bench
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K
CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems Red Series With Noise Blocker  NB-eLoop Fans
Motherboard: GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
RAM: G.SKILL RipJawsX 2x4GB (8GB) 2400MHz CAS 10
Graphics: Intel HD4600
Storage: Crucial M4 64GB
PSU: Enermax MaxRevo 1350W 80PLUS Gold

Coolers On Test

Prolimatech Megahalems Red Series
Phanteks PH-TC12DX
Thermalright AXP-200
Thermalright Silver Arrow SB-E

Acoustic performance
Each cooler was tested in a low sound environment to ensure no interference with the testing results. A decibel monitor is placed at 30cm away from the cooler which is much closer than you would probably be sitting but it allows for consistent readings in my eyes.  The system is left to idle for five minutes to ensure it is at its most rested work load and then the readings are taken. The fans are on PWM mode rather than ‘x’ volts as some fans will not spin without it getting its start voltage. The PWM curves are set to the default ones that are supplied by the Z87X-OC’s BIOS.

To find out how much noise the fan(s) will make under a full loading, I plug them straight into a 12v line to ensure that they are running at full speed to give you an idea of how much noise is created at maximum RPM ranges.

Thermal performance
Thermal performance is judged on four factors overall; the idle temperature at stock and overclocked speeds as well as the loaded temperatures at stock and loaded speeds. During the testing, whether that be the idle or loaded testing, the system is either in idle or full load for a duration of five minutes before any readings are taken. The average temperature across all four cores is then noted down and used as the results. All room temperatures are recorded beforehand as well as during the test to ensure that the delta temperature is as accurate as possible.

As with any cooler if you decide to choose which fans you want on it, the noise levels will vary greatly. However, our sample came with the two NB-eLoop fans which means that they are on test. They are awfully quiet as you can see from the graphs below, and they have the lowest readout for a full power fan that we have tested thus far. However, I have one deep concern and that is that they do not seem to push very much air at all. They are rated at around 68CFM but it definitely does not feel like that amount of air is being pushed. It’ll be interesting to see how this cooler performs with these fans.

This is most probably the aspect of the review which most of you are interested in so I won’t waste too much of your time and jump straight into the results.

At 3.9GHz and in idle conditions, the Megahalems performs the best out of the coolers which I’ve had on test thus far. It is a fair amount colder at idle than the other coolers which have been on my test bench recently. However, it was unable to maintain that performance under load and slipped down into the bottom half of the results. However, it is very close to the Silver Arrow SB-E from Thermalright with only 0.1°c difference between the two.

Turning up the clocks to 4.5GHz with 1.28 volts going through the CPU, it’s a very similar story again. The Megahalems has one of the lowest idle delta temperatures but when you kick the i7 up to full whack, it struggles to maintain its cool and quickly finds itself in the lower half of the results with a delta of 62.2°c which is almost 10°c above the Silver Arrow SB-E.

I find these temperatures somewhat high when you consider how expensive this cooler is and how I initially expected it to perform. I do believe that the fans are to blame as the airflow isn’t all there. In order to find out if this was indeed the case, I installed a pair of Noctua NF-P12 fans which did bring the temperatures down by as much as 5°c, but they were not the fans included in this bundle that I received for review which is why the results were not used.

Prolimatech aim to provide the end users with unbeatable performance and great quality products, and I set out to find out whether it was indeed capable of doing so. With great build quality and a fantastic mounting design that I regard as the best one I’ve used to date, how did it perform?

Unfortunately, beginning with a negative start to this paragraph, I do feel that this cooler was let down somewhat by the fans that were provided. The reason for this is that they do not shift very much air at all and the temperatures were substantially lower when I used two Noctua NF-P12 fans. However, with that being said, the fans do have a positive side and that is the fact that they are very well made and very quiet too. I struggled to hear them unless I got close up, even when they were running at full speed. Fans for this cooler are obviously going to be a personal preference but I would recommend choosing those with high static pressure if you are looking for a good fan or even a set of fans.

One huge positive which I feel that Prolimatech did brilliantly on this cooler is the mounting system. I have been hoping that manufacturers would deploy such a mounting kit for years and years, and I’ve finally come across a manufacturer who does just that. Out of all of the coolers which have been tested and used over the years, this one is the only one to have a mounting system where by cooler does not swivel once it is mounted and that is with thanks to the way that the bracket clamps down on to the cooler. I really admire it and for that alone it deserves an award but we don’t do those unfortunately.

The Megahalems is quite expensive for what it is when you consider that you have to buy two fans on top of the coolers price as well. Two decent fans will cost you at least £10 a pop so that alone would bring the total cost to over £70 and easily up to the £90 range if you went for really expensive fans. Unfortunately for Prolimatech, it just does not compete (at least according to my testing) with a cooler that costs less to buy and comes with fans when you buy it.

To sum it all up, I would have to say that this is a great cooler that is sadly let down by the fans which were supplied. It is a little pricey for what it is but I do believe that it has great potential to be an awesome cooler with fans that have the right balance of airflow and static pressure. I do however feel that this cooler is worth our design award, without question. The reason for this is both the actual look and feel of the cooler as well as the mounting system which is quite frankly superb.

Many thanks to Prolimatech and Overclockers UK for providing us with a sample.