Those who follow what goes on in the cooling business will no doubt be aware of Gigabytes cooling products. Early this year I found myself reviewing the 3D Cooler Pro, the first performance based cooling product from Gigabyte. After years of reviewing Gigabyte graphics cards, motherboards and even optical devices, the thought of a Gigabyte heatsink and fan unit never crossed my mind. It is becoming more and more common these days for large manufacturers such as Gigabyte to begin venturing into new waters. Long gone are the days where Gigabyte, ASUS and several other manufacturers just produced graphics cards and motherboards as their primary product lines.

December of 2003, the tier one motherboard manufacturer Gigabyte went out on a limb and announced a cooling product to cater for a wide range of processors. Dubbed the '3D Cooler-Pro', Gigabyte had cleverly designed this heatsink making it possible to be installed on not only the latest Athlon64 processors, but also the older AthlonXP processor. However, its cooling abilities expand beyond the AMD line of processors, as the 3D Cooler-Pro could also be installed on Pentium 4 processors. This kind of universal support was very unique, as very few heatsinks at that time could cover so many products.

The 3D Cooler-Pro was very distinct compared to the wide range of identical coolers out there. This product was unlike anything I had ever seen or tested before, and surprisingly the design made sense. Far too often I find new outrageous looking cooling products that are nothing more than just that. They look fantastic, but when it comes to performing they are most often better off just being used as paper weights. Gigabyte being who they are, you would naturally assume if they are going to release a cooling product that it would uphold a certain level of quality.

Their reputation served them well once again, with the release of the 3D Cooler-Pro. Since the release of the 3D Cooler-Pro, Gigabyte has unleashed a whole hoard of 3D Coolers. However, the time has come to upgrade this series with the 3D Rocket Cooler! As the name suggests, the 3D Rocket Cooler carrys on from the 3D Cooler series, bringing a few enhancements along the way. The whole concept of the 3D Cooler was to cool surrounding components along with the processor. This is what made this particular product so effective, as there is a great deal of capacitors around the processor on any given motherboard, that are heat sensitive to a certain degree. So lets find out how the Rocket series has been enhanced and how well it can live up to the expectations set by its predecessor.