Introduction

New heatsink for the Gelid brand whith the arrival of its Tranquillo Rev 5. Following the legacy of Tranquillo series originally released back in 2010 for Socket 775 and AM2, this cooler is back today in its fifth revision with a new style featuring an all-black design and direct-touch heatpipes. A new model that bets on a slim heatsink and single 120mm black fan in order not to impact the RAM. Nevertheless, its structure makes it rather affordable, a positive point, especially for your wallet. Given its 150W TDP cooling capability while remaining slim and smart design, makes it an ideal candidate for the entry-level systems. Also, no LEDs to speak of, which is not a big deal if its job is done correctly.



Cross-platform support is also decent. From AMD, in addition to AM4, AM3(+), AM2(+) and FMx(+) are also supported. Intel’s support extends all the way up to LGA 775. Of the older sockets, only the “T” (LGA 1366) is missing. As for HEDT, you can install Tranquillo rev. 5 on LGA 2011(v3) and 2066 as well. Naturally there is also support for LGA 1700 and 115x.




Packaging & Contents

The cardboard box with Tranquillo Rev 5 is decorated in the company’s traditional dark style and bears a picture of the cooler on its face side. Some features of the cooler are highlighted at the top.




The contents of the box are highlighted along with the supported sockets from Intel and AMD.



The features of the cooler are highlighted here. The solution has 4x copper heat pipes and is rated for up to 150w TDP.



The specifications are printed here.



There is a white color Styrofoam pad placed on the top of the cooler.



There is a top cover inside the main packing box. We can spot the terminating edges which are not pointy, exposed through this top cover.



Gelid has provided a user manual with the necessary instructions and pictures for the installation. There aren't any extra metal clips to install a senond fan on the heatsink.



Gelid supply a small syringe of Gelid GC-Pro thermal paste.



Mounting Kit for multiple CPU sockets: AM4, AM3+, AM3, AM2+, AM2, LGA1700, LGA2066, LGA2011-v3, LGA2011, LGA1200, LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA1155, LGA1151, LGA1150, FM2+, FM2, FM1.






A Closer Look

To begin, its all-black aesthetics appear extremely clean and premium, plus, it sports the true tower design too. The cooler together with the fan is 154 mm in height and is quite slim (72 mm), so it doesn’t interfere with the DIMM slots and doesn’t interfere with tall memory modules either. Compared to rev. 4, the 5th Tranquillo cooler revision is 15.3 % lighter and up to 23.9 % lighter compared to rev. 2. That’s a difference of 154 gr.



Cooling power is provided by 48 aluminum fins and four copper heat pipes in direct contact with the processor. The fins' leading and trailing edges have a shallow arc which naturally creates a small plenum behind the fan. The aluminum fins measure 0.4mm thick and are spaced 2.0mm apart.



A little bit of space between the rear of the fan and the cooling fins is important to reduce noise and ease air flow. The fan is held in place with good reliable metal spring fan clips.



The heat pipes are terminating over the top cover.



The four 6mm diameter heatpipes intersect the aluminum fin stack in an asymmetrical pattern, on a 10mm offset. That means air impinges around each of the four heatpipes sequentially as it progresses through the cooling fins.



The four 6mm diameter copper heatpipes are soldered to the nickel plated aluminum fins and to the heatsink's base cap which helps hold the exposed heatpipes in position.



The heatpipes are mechanically flattened on one side so they sit flush against the CPU without requiring an additional heatspreader. In practice, provided the heatpipes aren't over flattened and the internal wick structure remains contiguous, this is a cheap and thermally efficient means of reducing thermal joint resistance. The manufacturing challenge is keeping the unconstrained heatpipes from shifting over time as swaged joints can loosen after prolonged heating and cooling cycles. To address this, Gelid appears to have soldered the heatpipes to the nickel plated aluminum mounting bracket which sits atop.



The base, or the contact area with the processor’s heat spreader, is quite ordinary – with direct contact heatpipes, between which the gaps are filled with aluminum.



A 120-millimeter PWM fan with a speed range of 700–1600 rpm is used to cool the heatsink. Its maximum airflow should correspond to 111.3 m3/h at a static pressure of 1.47 mm H2O. The bearings used are hydrodynamic and the mean time between failures is set at an average 40 000 hours.



The 120mm PWM fan draws power from a standard 4-pin fan header.




Installation Process

Here we will walk you through the installation process. It is worth noting we test the cpu cooler using an Intel motherboard. First of all, prepare the Mounting brackets. Those attach to the top of the base plate’s side tabs, and are secured from underneath with a pair of screws on each side.



With that done, prepare the backplate. Intel backplate's has LGA 115x and LGA 1700 mounting provisions.



Moving on, each bracket's corner requires just one screw, so line them up and tighten them down.



Attach the fan to the heat sink using the metal clips and connect the 4-in PWM connector to the 4-pin PWM connector on the motherboard. This would complete the installation.



The Tranquillo Rev 5 heatsink has a narrow footprint and that allow it to fit on most motherboards with memory slots straddling a little too closely to the CPU socket. There is no clearance issue with respect to the first PCIe X16 slot.




Test System & Methology

Test System:

Cpu:Intel Core i7-6700K@4.6 GHz.
Motherboard:Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z170
Memory:16Gb Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666Mhz
Graphics Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB SC2
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNova 1200 P2
Storage Drive: 3TB Seagate Barracuda
Boot Drive: SSD 850 PRO 2.5" SATA III 2TB
Chassis: Dimastech Bench Table Easy V2.5
Windows 10 64-bit



Software:

Speedfan
CPUID HW Monitor 1.23
CPUID CPU-Z 1.65
Prime 95

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 Prime 95′s for 30 minutes.



Performance

This is definitely not a difficult task for the majority of the coolers but for the slim design Gelid Tranquillo Rev 5, it would be interesting to see the results. On an 58°C, this cooler did a good job.



The Intel i7 6700k with all cores set to 4600MHz was doing approximately a lot of TDP. The Gelid Tranquillo Rev 5 did a maximum temperature on any core being 68°C. The cooler did not let the chip throttle.



In our noise levels test with fan at 100% speed, the Tranquillo Rev 5 measures a respectable 44dBA which puts it mid-table in our charts. It was noticeable during testing, when the fan is in his PWM low speed mode, it is virtually silent. This also shows that the Tranquillo Rev 5 has a good balance between noise levels and thermal performance.




Final Thoughts

AIO liquid coolers and beefy air heatsinks grab plenty of attention. But vast swathes of the PC DIY building community do not require and cannot justify such expense, especially for cooling lower powered CPUs. That is where the cost-effective Gelid Tranquillo Rev 5 comes in. Honestly, when receiving the Tranquillo Rev 5 CPU cooler from Gelid we didn't have great expectations for how well it would perform. What impresses us the most, however, is that despite its slim size, this is a cooler that punches well above its weight in terms of CPU temperature control. The key highlight, however, simply has to go to the acoustic performance which, quite frankly, is barely audible until you start asking your CPU to work really hard. In terms of aesthetics and build quality, the Gelid Tranquillo Rev 5 is absolutely faultless. The entire cooler gets an all-black treatment, giving it a sleek and stealthy look. Speaking of those aesthetics though, although lacking any of the modern trends for ARGB lighting, in our opinion, the Tranquillo Rev 5 doesn’t need it. It looks absolutely fantastic and doesn’t need any of the perceived crutches that other CPU coolers utilise in RGB lighting to, frankly, put in a pig in makeup. The Gelid Tranquillo Rev 5 would look amazing sat in practically any system design or build you can think of while still being amazingly potent and practical. RAM and general components interference is unlikely thanks to the Tranquillo Rev 5’s size. Installation is a breeze, thanks to plenty of room for memory and only a single connection to deal with.



The Gelid Tranquillo Rev.5 CPU cooler comes with a 5-year warranty and is priced at 34 euros. With the Tranquillo Rev 5, Gelid has achieved the goal of offering a budget CPU cooler that represents a reasonable performance upgrade from the Tranquillo Rev 4. We are actually huge fans of slimmer single tower coolers. Lets face it the massive dual-tower, dual-fan coolers really take up a lot of real estate inside your system, cover your RGB memory, and most of the time are a pain in the ass to install. That is why we really like Gelid’s Tranquillo Rev.5, it is a simple cooler that gets the job done!