Which one: True or HR-01 Plus

According to this review, the HR-01+ is great for low airflow (low noise) cpu cooling. Bit if you aren't concerned with VERY quiet operation, then the TRUE is the superior cooler, generally regarded as among the best air coolers around today.

Which ever one you get, make sure you get some good fans for the cooler. I find Noctua NF-P12s keep my TRUE cool and quiet. I also hear that skarkoon or xilence fans are good for CPU coolers too.
 
The TRUE is excellent (I get 40c loads with my 720BE oc'd to 3.6 from 2.8) - but avoid it like the plague if you don't have a top-mounted fan! For some reason you can only mount it facing up in AM* systems.
 
I opted for the HR-01+ because noise was important to me. It has a wider fin spacing to fans don't need to work quite as hard to force air between them.

I then combined it with a Noctua NF-P12 fan (which is a variant on the S12 fan), which has been engineered for high pressure functions (i.r. CPU coolers rather than general case flow). I also use the low-noise adapter which drops the RPM down to 1000rpm.

What can I say... it's very cool and very quiet. The TRUE can go marginally cooler at full fan speed, but is significantly noisier. Once you start dropping the fan voltage down, the HR-01+ is the better cooler.

Check out SCPR's review.

If you overclock heavily and you want to take air as far as it goes, go for TRUE. If you overclock moderately and/or appreciate quiet solutions, go for a HR-01 Plus. If you don't o/c and aren't as anal about noise as I am, opt for something like an Akasa AK-965 which offers decent, quiet cooling for a quarter of the price.

Just my £0.02.

PS. The HR-01 Plus is also that bit lighter than the TRUE.
 
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I was always under the impression that the HR-01 plus was designed to be passive, and surpasses the TRUE when run passive. However, when fans are attached, the TRUE significantly outperforms it with a hot processor. Perhaps I'll find benches of this later, I'm sure comparisons exist. You may well find that the passive one does just as well with cool chips but gets destroyed by the true when sat on something hot
 
JonJ678 said:
I was always under the impression that the HR-01 plus was designed to be passive, and surpasses the TRUE when run passive. However, when fans are attached, the TRUE significantly outperforms it with a hot processor. Perhaps I'll find benches of this later, I'm sure comparisons exist. You may well find that the passive one does just as well with cool chips but gets destroyed by the true when sat on something hot
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Not specifically - the HR-01 Plus is design to be low airflow & quiet. It can be passive (if you aren't demanding and have sufficient case airflow) or if you use a fan duct to link it into your exhaust fan.

But by fitting a quiet, low airflow fan, you have an almost-quiet solution that can almost-cool as well as the TRUE.

And although in theory the TRUE can be passive, it's a quick way to kill hot CPUs.

If you follow the SPCR link in my previous post, you will see a direct comparison between the TRUE and HR-01 Plus at 12/9/7/5v - The HR-01 Plus almost keeps up at full tilt, but as soon as you lower the airflow, the TRUE performance drops radically.

For a frame of reference, PC Probe reports my CPU at stock as around 24C. If I o/c to 3GHz (nothing special for a Q6600) the temp increases to early 30s. If I go beyond that, my mobo (NB) gets too hot long before PC Probe reports the CPU going above 45C.

OK, it's a subjective indicator, but it demonstrates my point - if I were going to push 3.6GHz, I'd get better performance out of a TRUE, but then again, you need a 120mm fan at full tilt to cool the northbridge and the RAM. And it would be very noisy.

Don't take my work for it - read the SPCR review and look at the comparisons.
 
That review does demonstrate the HR01 is better than the true in some situations; there's really not a lot to choose between them unless you're pushing the boundaries of your CPUs thermal capacity though.

Get the HR-01 if noise is important, the TRUE if your clock is being limited by heat.
 
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