Introduction

What I think I like most about my job is that I get to test all the latest ideas that come down the pipe to retail aftermarket tech components. With CPU coolers more specifically, I have seen all sorts of configurations, all sorts of tower concepts, low profile, round ones, square ones; well you get the idea. What you don't see publicized very often at all are passive cooling solutions. I can think of only one or two other coolers I would run passively in all my time reviewing CPU coolers, but nothing designed with that intention out of the gate.

As we already know the guys and gals over at SilverStone are always trying its hands at innovation with designs that you may not have considered. Even if the design is similar to something else you may have seen, a ton of R&D goes into even the finest details with them. Keeping with this trend, basically SilverStone took the HE01 we saw not too long ago, added a ton more surface area, and ship this new cooler without fans with the intention to be able to control the heat of the latest and greatest processors, within certain limits.

I am speaking of the monstrously big SST-HE02 from the Heligon series of coolers. Without giving it all away before we jump into the specs, let me just say this cooler is wide, deep, not so tall, but weighs in at 990 grams of nothing but copper and aluminum. The design of this cooler is only passive for 95W processors without some sort of air flow. With optional fans or a bit of case air flow the figure is raised to a 150W TDP and beyond depending on the fans chosen to cool this massive tower.

I know for a fact that this review will interest you to see the results. I plan to passively test, test with a case fan setup, and even with strapping on a pair of average spec'd fans to give the HE02 all the chance in the world to keep my processor cool. Let's see just how well it does that.