Following the release of the Engine 27 two years ago, Thermaltake is taking another stab at the Sandia Labs and CoolChip Technologies inspired air bearing metallic fan heatsink with the tiny Engine 17 cooler which, at a mere 17mm tall, is suitable for even the smallest SFF systems. The Engine 17 CPU cooler is compatible with the newer Intel 115x sockets (LGA 1150, 1151, 1155, and 1156). Measuring 95.1mm x 95.1mm x 17mm, the heatsink features a round nickel plated copper base that contacts the CPU IHS. A metallic PWM fan (9 CFM) with 40 blades spins at at 1,500 to 2,500 RPM while a thin layer of air acts as both a bearing and a heat exchange layer. A ring of 119 angled stationary fins surround the fan and help with cooling.

The Engine 17 cooler has a notably small footprint with the entire cooler staying well within the bounds of the socket mounting holes and barely covering the VRMs in Thermaltake's demo images. There is definitely no need to worry about RAM compatibility with this cooler. The downside, of course, is that the size limits the processors it can cool. Thermaltake claims that the smaller Engine 17 cooler can cool up to 35W TDP processors and while it may not win any temperature feats, it should at least be fairly quiet (it is rated at 11 to 23 dBA). It would enable a very thin SFF system with an AMD Ryzen 5 2400GE or Ryzen 3 2200GE or Intel Coffee Lake T-series e.g. i7-8700T) CPU. Such a system could be used as a quiet and discreet home theater PC or game streaming endpoint or (as Thermaltake is playing up) in a 1U server for low power servers and networking devices.

The Thermaltake Engine 17 will be available soon though exact dates and pricing are still to be determined. It will likely be a bit less than the larger $47 Engine 27 cooler though.

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