When it comes to motherboards ASUS is always one of the first names that comes to mind and the same can be said when it comes to graphics cards. Even when discussing other computer components, such as LCD Monitors, optical devices and even notebooks, ASUS is generally a name that quickly pops up. However, while ASUS is the go-to man in most of these large consumer markets, I feel they are yet to make a name for themselves in the cooling industry. In fact, for anything that falls under the thermal solution category, it is generally best sourced else where.

This means when it comes to CPU cooling and computer cases, I have never even really bothered checking out what ASUS have to offer. Of course this is primarily because in the past they have not really had anything to offer. This is quite surprising given how impressive their motherboard thermal solutions are, as ASUS has been rapidly improving this aspect of their motherboards for quite some time now. Over a year ago now I did have a dark encounter with an ASUS cooling product called the “Star Ice” which was a CPU cooler.

Still to this very day, I have no idea why ASUS even included the word “ice” in this products name, as “hot as hell” would have been more appropriate, either that or “70dBA hair dryer”. All bad jokes aside, the ASUS Star Ice was a shocking product, which was hard for me to accept given how impressed I was with their motherboards at the time. Not only was this massive heatsink near impossible to get into the case, once you did get it in, installing it properly was almost out of the question. The fan was just stupid at full speed and when lowered to a more tolerable volume, a Pentium 4 660 processor went from hot to critical melt down in a matter of moments.

Honestly, the Star Ice has kept me away from similar coolers from ASUS, such as their Silent Square Series and the new Silent Square Pro. However, when offered the more conventional looking ASUS Chilly Vent & Chilly Vent Lux heatsinks for review, I really wanted to find out if these coolers were more respectable than the disastrous Star Ice. That said, right out of the box these two coolers look far more practical, let’s move on to check them out in more detail.