One look at the Austrian-designed Noctua and you know it means business. For a start, it's something of a giant, featuring two fin stacks and two fans. The quality of engineering is superb, right through to the colour instructions. Even the thermal paste is 'award-winning' thermal paste. It looks the business, in a no-nonsense way. Only the hospital beige-coloured fans spoil the party here. Compared to the design excesses of Fenrir, Yasya and Thor's Hammer it looks positively clinical.

The Tranquillo is a big tower cooler with four 6mm heat pipes (without Direct Touch, though) and a fin stack which, for once, didn't feature blood-letting edges. It fits the usual suspects of AMD and Intel chips. You get a lot of hardware for your money here. Unlike Titan's Fenrir and Xigmatek's Thor's Hammer we are not in the world of heavy-metal casings. This is a workmanlike cooler without frills.

Simple but effective CPU cooler for a variety of sockets

This not-so-little CPU cooler is limited in form and function

A CPU cooler offering some chilly temperatures at a bargain price

Is this twin-fanned CPU chiller a cool customer?

A bargain CPU cooler that offers some seriously low temperatures

Is water cooling still cool?

This giant slab of titanium delight certainly has all the aesthetics of a top-notch water cooling sytem

With its unusual horizontal design, in which the heatpipes move warmth through a right angle, the Orochi is a looker you’d want to show off in a windowed case.

Calling your special edition series ‘Amazing’ is potentially hubristic, to say the least. Fortunately, Asus delivers on appearance – at least

As a passive heatsink, the Hyper Z600 fares much better than some of its rivals. It's unique 'X' shaped design and mix of radiator blade length aren't just for show: they've been calculated to improve heat dissipation in all directions, apparently.

Here’s an interesting proposition: an all-in-one, simple to fit CPU water cooler that comes ready connected and for a mere £80.

Zerotherm have missed a trick with their Nirvana cooler – it could have at least come in a heart-shaped box. Or smelt like teen spirit.

One of the major hassles when fitting a new cooler is having to remove the backplate and hence the motherboard from your case. Thankfully the AK-925 is a doddle to fit, especially on an AMD board.

There may be a trend towards ‘digital’ (Class-D) amplification, but most AV receivers use an established technology known as Class A/B.

The Vendetta is a surprisingly understated cooler, in contrast to its name. It's a simple, effective peripheral that's a doddle to fit. It is one of those blessed coolers that comes without an enclosed backplate for your mobo.

Good airflow, provided by quality system fans, is like sweet love for your PC. But this isn't the noisy kind of love, it's as quiet as it comes. With a diameter of 120mm and a depth of 25MM, this fan is capable of gulping gallons of air into your chassis.

Zalman CNPS7500-CU review: We've seen Zalman's 'flower' cooler design a fair few times. And this latest incarnation ups the surface area of its copper fins considerably, but obviously grows to much larger proportions to accomodate for this

Asus Silent Square Pro review: A few months ago we covered Asus' V60 cooler. We learned later that Asus has absolutely no plans to release it. Why? Well, this similarly-designed, but slicker looking cooler is likely to be the main reason

Apack Zerotherm BTF95 review: Passive cooling once involved sticking a small lump of metal onto your CPU. Well, those days are gone, as this particular heatsink proves. You might be eyeing it up for your media centre - it is, after all, utterly silent

Cooler Master Geminll review: This is a cooler that seems like it could cause metal shortages across the world. A gigantic lump of a heatsink makes up the design that spreads itself all over your case's internals.

This is a tried and tested design that's been doing the rounds since Athlon XP days. Though this latest 'flower' is a lot bigger, it's still up to the task, running very quietly and still cranking out a minimum of heat

Heatpipes are everything for this colossus. The heatsink fitted to the CPU is barely any larger than the kind you'd see on GPU RAM. It works, though, with most of the heat being dragged up to a larger block hovering above with a 120mm fan bolted to its top