DeepCool Gamer Storm Gabriel

[testman78]

Introduction
Deepcool, based in China, is a very popular company to the cooling scene and it's fairly established company. They have a big range of cooling products for Servers, Desktops and Laptops. Their main goal is to provide maintain customer satisfaction by serving customer's ever-changing thermal needs and providing the quickest and most comprehensive service available.Today, I'll be having a detailed look at their all new Gabriel CPU Cooler under its GAMER STORM brand.It is a low profile CPU cooler, and thus intended for more cramped enclosures.It features a copper base, an aluminum heatsinks and four copper heatpipes.



Gabriel also features a 120 mm fan that can spin at speeds ranging from 900 RPM to twice that.In it's entirety, the cooler weighs around 426 grams. The combination of everything gives Gabriel the power to cool down CPUs with TDPs of up to 100 W.The entity have support for most modern CPU sockets, including AMD's FM2 and AM3+ sockets, as well as Intel's new LGA1150 socket.




Packaging & Contents

Deepcool Gabriel comes in a really nice and stiff black box. It's surely the best coolers box I've ever seen. It has that sleek professional look, I am really impressed.Front side of the box actually has a dark mask artwork and the Gamer Storm Logo.



Back side of box has the specifications and some barcode sticker.



The features are present on the tab that flips open.Luckily, this one was the last flap.



Right under it, cooler, fan and accessory box are firmly tucked in seperate card boxes. Cooler is fully secure in this packaging.



Mounting hardware,Gamer Storm fan clips,and a large tube of thermal paste form the CPU cooler's supplied bundle.



The installation manual covers the necessary steps.



Gabriel also features a new 120 mm fan(GS120)that can spin at speeds ranging from 900 RPM to twice that that can spin at speeds ranging from 900 RPM to twice that.



Though 20mm thick, the GS120 pushes the same airflow as normal 25mm thick fans. You can save 5mm space, which matters when you try to add a side panel fan Or when the heatsink blocks your motherboard memory slots, you definitely need this 5mm space. That's what the GS120 is designed for.



With a 4-pin PWM connector, GS120 is able to lower down the fan speed when the system is getting idle.The fan cable is made of PTFE (Poly Tetra Fluoro Ethylene), which withstands really high temperature and heavy duty usage to ensure a long lifespan.



Two pieces of rubber cable ties are included to route the fan cables neatly and to keep everything in place inside the case. This provides a clean looking case and also improve the overall ventilation.



A Closer Look
So we already know the Gabriel is not your typical cooler. It focuses on size first which eschews the tower design in favor of a top down horizontal style.Based on the concept of designing a SFF cooler for Mini ITX boards, the overall dimension of GABRIEL is 120X120X60mm.



With the Gabriel out the box,we can see the compact heatsink in all of its fin and 4-heatpipe glory.Starting with the side of the cooler, the heat pipes terminate as they exit it.



Each of the fins of the cooler have tabs bent on the sides to keep the fins spaced properly.



Since we are dealing with 40mm in total height, the four 6mm heat pipes are making some pretty tight bends to make it from the copper base, out and up, and then bending again as they return into the fins. Even so, DeepCool accomplished this with minimal distortion to the pipes.



I also wanted to highlight how small this cooler is.The entire cooler fits inside the footprint of a 120mm fan which is just amazing.



The full set of heatsink is nickel plated in order to keep away from oxidization to ensure a long lifespan.There are also two pieces of aluminum leaving the other side of the base (probably to support the extra weight of 120mm fan).



Another bottom view to see the base.From the base we can see the rather intriguing heat pipe arrangement.



Since the entire cooler is nickel plated, you are given a protective sticker to keep the base in clean and unmolested condition. The sticker also has the warning on it to be sure to remove this prior to installation.



The slim fan is held in place by two metal fan clips on each side. These are easily detachable should you want to change the direction of the airflow.



The copper base is nickel plated and polished.The surface comes with a matte finish .




Installation Process
Here you can see the back of the motherboard with the cooler fitted, it requires four nuts to be screwed in firmly and no backplate is required.



This is a tricky procedure that had me crying out for an extra hand.This is what the Gabriel looks like with the Intel mounting brackets and screws fitted.



Once installation was finished, the Gabriel was very securely attached to my motherboard.



Once seated, plug the 4 pin power connector onto the CPU fan header on the motherboard and it's off to the races.





Installed - Memory Clearance
The Gabriel blocks one RAM slot out of 3 so you will need low profile RAM to populate all four RAM slots on LGA 1155. On mini-ITX and Micro-ATX motherboards it would block two RAM slots as there is less spacing between the RAM and CPU socket area on these.



Here you can see the RAM clearance a little closer. It is a very tight fit indeed.



You can change orientation as well.




Test System & Methology

Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k
Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H
Memory: 16GB Mushkin
Graphics Card: Sapphire HD 6970
Power Supply: Antec HCG 750W
Chassis: Cooler Master Silencio 650 Pure
Boot Drive: Ocz Vector
Storage Drive: 3TB Seagate Barracuda



Software:

CPUID HW Monitor 1.23
CPUID CPU-Z 1.65
Prime95 v27.1

I am testing the performance as follows:

Ambient temperatures are kept at 23C throughout my tests.
The CPU Fan is set to 100% to eliminate inconsistencies as a result of PWM control.
Idle temperatures are obtained after booting the PC and idling on the desktop for 30 minutes.
Load temperatures are obtained after running Prime95′s Small FTTs test for 15 minutes.
To measure noise levels i disable the two front in-take fans, rear exhaust and GPU fan.
On the following pages you'll have the opportunity to read what Gabriel is capable of.


Results-Temperature
As normal i am comparing this low profile cooler with the stock Intel model and some mainstream alternative's.At stock CPU frequencies,Gabriel manages to offer a performance boost over Intel's reference CPU cooler.It also compete's well against the Scythe Big Shuriken.That continues at load where Gabriel is 14c cooler than Intel's reference CPU cooler.




Results-Noise Level

Unsurprisingly, the Deepcool Gamer Storm Gabriel offers excellent acoustic performance .Once it is installed in a case I doubt you'll be able to hear it.




Conclusion
To be honest, once I opened the box and saw the way the cooler was packaged, I thought to myself, this is nice, and more manufacturers should do this.From what I can see, and what I gathered from my testing, all that time and effort in the Gabriel was well worth it.The Deepcool Gabriel is a well-designed, low-profile CPU cooler that is able to offer a noticeable performance boost over the cooling capabilities of Intel's supplied heatsink.Managing to outperform the Intel Core i5 3770K stock CPU cooler with more diminutive dimensions,Deepcool's engineering team has designed an efficient heatsink for the Gabriel.Installation was a fast and generally straightforward procedure. Holding the cooler in place on the motherboard's front side while fastening it from the back had us urging for an extra hand. One solution is to rest the cooler on a flat surface, although this method can help to promote movement which causes trails of thermal paste to be left over one's motherboard.



Priced at 40 US Dollars, the Deepcool Gabriel targets mini-ITX and small form factor users, to who complying with space constraints is generally more important than all-out cooling performance. For users that desire a low-profile CPU cooler that offers a noticeable performance improvement and size reduction over Intel's stock heatsink, the Deepcool Gabriel is a worthwhile purchase.It really is the perfect cooler for small environments. It allows you to use it in silence as-is and enjoy the comforts of managed thermals inside the PC and limited noise coming out of it.