With the GX-7, Gelid has a new high-end aircooler in their portfolio. The tower cooler has been equipped with a nice and appealing 120 millimeter PWM fan with blue LEDs and best of all: the bundle comes at a very competitive price tag. So, there are plenty of reasons to be curious about how this thing performs compared to some of the most powerful aircoolers out there. 
On the following pages we will show you what the GELID GX-7 is capable of.
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Preview
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Specifications and included in delivery
Specifications
| Model | GELID GX-7 |
| Material | Aluminium / copper |
| Dimension (D x W x H) | 187 mm x 128 mm x 159 mm |
| Weight | 720 g |
| Fan | 1 x Wing 12 PL (Blue), FN-FW12BPL-18 |
| Rotation speed | 600 - 1800 rpm |
| Noise level | 10 - 26.8 dBA |
| Warranty | 3 years |
| On the manufacturer's website | GX-7 (CC-GX7-01-A) |
Included in delivery
- Cooling block
- Mounting kit for Socket 775, 1155/1156 and 1366
- Mounting kit for Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/AM3+ and FM1
- Gelid GC-2 Thermal compound
- 1 x Fan Gelid Wing 12 PL (Blue)
- Mounting components
- Manual
The Gelid GX-7 comes well protected from outer influeces so that none of the parts included will be damaged during transportation. The very good delivery includes a lot of accessories and therefore it's almost obvious that the mounting kits are compatible with all different sockets that are in the market today. Furthermore you'll also find one PWM 120 mm fan equiped with blue LED delivered as well as a second mounting kit for an optional fan to provide "push and pull" cooling the GX-7 cooler.
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Construction and design
Construction
The Gelid GX-7 mainly consists of aluminium and nickel coated copper. The base plate is made of solid copper which hasn't been coated with nickel. Furthermore the baseplate has been well lapped/polished and provide a good mirror effect. To transport the heat as efficiently as possible from the CPU there are seven heatpipes which all have a diameter of six millimeters. Altogether there are 45 fins soldered to the heatpipes. As standard the cooler comes equipped with one 120 millimeter PWM fan with blue LED however Gelid provided an additional clamping mechanism if you want to add a second fan to your GX-7.
Design
We did not see any manufacturing mistakes on our sample, and it seems that is has been well made which means that manufacturing is on a high level. It is interesting to see that Gelid decided to not arrange the heatpipes soldered in one row but made a special array with two heatpipes soldered on top of the three middle heatpipes. Doing so, the heat absorption capacity is better and take advantage of all seven heatpipes. They also opted for a V-design for the fins to optimize the airflow.
Fan
Gelid equips the GX-7 with one fan, measuring 120 millimeters in diameter. Featuring PWM acility, this fan is also equiped with four blue LED. The rotation speed of the fan is quite large, from 600 rpm up to 1800 rpm which is quite fast. With an airflow up to 128.6 cubic meters of air per hour and 2.66 mmaq as for the static pressure value for a noise level rated at 26.8 dBA max. Furhtermore this fan has a magnetic bearing which allows the fan to operate almost noiseless at low rotating speeds. Once the fan is dirty you can even disassemble it and wash it with floating water.
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Mounting
To mount the Gelid GX-7 properly you'll find two different mounting kits, one fits Intel sockets and the other AMD sockets. Installing the cooler wont need a lot of force. The cooler can be mounted easily but it still fits perfectly and there is plenty of pressure between the CPU and the coolers base plate thanks to the springs.
As we can see on the pictures, taken on a Asus board with the Gelid GX-7, the first DIMM slot is still usable and you can even fit on it Corsair's Dominator GTX series well know for their huge heatspreaders. For the tests we also mounted a second Wing 12 PL blue to test the Pull&Push capability of this cooler as the design of the GX-7 is able to receive a second fan and a additional clamping kit is provided in the bundle.
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Testsystem and testroutine
Testsystem
| Mainboard | ASUS P6TD Deluxe |
| Processor | Intel Core i7 920 2.66 GHz 4c/8t |
| Memory | Corsair Dominator TR3X3G1600C8D, 3 x 2 GByte |
| Graphics card | Gigabyte GTX 285 |
| Hard disk | Samsung Spinpoint F1 640 GByte |
| Power supply | Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050 Watt |
| Thermal grease | Gelid GC-2 |
Testroutine
The CPU is being evaluated using Real Temp and with Prime95 we reach nearly 100% load on the CPU. For measuring the noise level we use a Voltcraft SL-200 decibel meter, which is positioned one meter from the CPU cooler with the fan mounted.
- 2.66 GHz 12 volts load
- 2.66 GHz 7 volts load
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Results 2.66 GHz 12 volts
| Cooler / fan | Temp. diff. load | Absolute temp. | RPM | Noise | Price | Review link |
| Noctua NH-D14 | 31 K | 56 °C | 1300/1200 rpm | 40.9 dBA | CHF 114.- (EUR 76.-) | Noctua NH-D14 |
| Gelid GX-7 Dual-Fan | 33 K | 53 °C | 1800 rpm | 45.5 dBA | CHF 45.- (EUR 36.-) | Gelid GX-7 |
| Alpenföhn Nordwand Dual-Fan | 33 K | 57 °C | 1500 rpm | 43.0 dBA | CHF 103.- (EUR 69.-) | Alpenföhn Nordwand |
| Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow Dual-Fan | 34 K | 58 °C | 1400 rpm | 40.5 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 56.-) | Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow |
| Noctua NH-C14 Dual-Fan | 35 K | 57 °C | 1250 rpm | 41.0 dBA | CHF 91.- (EUR 71.-) | Noctua NH-C14 |
| Alpenföhn Nordwand | 35 K | 59 °C | 1500 rpm | 42.4 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 53.-) | Alpenföhn Nordwand |
| Gelid GX-7 Single-Fan | 35 K | 55 °C | 1800 rpm | 45.0 dBA | CHF 45.- (EUR 36.-) | Gelid GX-7 |
| Coolink Corator DS | 35 K | 57 °C | 1900 rpm | 47.9 dBA | ||
| Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow Single-Fan | 36 K | 59 °C | 1400 rpm | 37.0 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 56.-) | Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow |
| Corsair H5O Dual-Fan | 37 K | 59 °C | 1600 rpm | 44.4 dBA | CHF 133.- (EUR 95.-) | Corsair H5O |
| Noctua NH-C14 Single Fan | 38 K | 60 °C | 1250 rpm | 39.4 dBA | CHF 91.- (EUR 71.-) | Noctua NH-C14 |
| Noctua NH-U12P Dual-Fan | 38 K | 62 °C | 1400 rpm | 41.6 dBA | CHF 125.- (EUR 83.-) | Noctua NH-U12P |
| Corsair H5O | 38 K | 60 °C | 1600 rpm | 44.0 dBA | CHF 113.- (EUR 81.-) | Corsair H5O |
| Noctua NH-U12P | 40 K | 64 °C | 1400 rpm | 40.5 dBA | CHF 85.- (EUR 57.-) | Noctua NH-U12P |
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Results 2.66 GHz 7 Volts
| Cooler / fan | Temp. diff. load | Absolute temp. | RPM | Noise | Price | Review link |
| Noctua NH-D14 | 36 K | 61 °C | 1000/900 rpm | 37.2 dBA | CHF 114.- (EUR 76.-) | Noctua NH-D14 |
| Noctua NH-C14 Dual-Fan | 37 K | 59 °C | 800 rpm | 34.1 dBA | CHF 91.- (EUR 71.-) | Noctua NH-C14 |
| Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow Dual-Fan | 37 K | 61 °C | 1000 rpm | 38.9 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 56.-) | Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow |
| Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow Single-Fan | 39 K | 63 °C | 1000 rpm | 36.2 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 56.-) | Prolimatech Megahalems Megashadow |
| Gelid GX-7 Dual-Fan | 42 K | 62 °C | 700 rpm | 34 dBA | CHF 45.- (EUR 36.-) | Gelid GX-7 |
| Noctua NH-C14 Single Fan | 42 K | 64 °C | 800 rpm | 33.5 dBA | CHF 91.- (EUR 71.-) | Noctua NH-C14 |
| Corsair H5O Dual-Fan | 42 K | 64 °C | 900 rpm | 37.5 dBA | CHF 133.- (EUR 95.-) | Corsair H5O |
| Alpenföhn Nordwand Dual-Fan | 43 K | 67 °C | 700 rpm | 37.0 dBA | CHF 103.- (EUR 69.-) | Alpenföhn Nordwand |
| Noctua NH-U12P Dual-Fan | 44 K | 68 °C | 1000 rpm | 38.0 dBA | CHF 125.- (EUR 83.-) | Noctua NH-U12P |
| Gelid GX-7 Single-Fan | 45 K | 65 °C | 700 rpm | 33.5 dBA | CHF 45.- (EUR 36.-) | Gelid GX-7 |
| Noctua NH-U12P | 45 K | 69 °C | 1000 rpm | 37.4 dBA | CHF 85.- (EUR 57.-) | Noctua NH-U12P |
| Coolink Corator DS | 46 K | 68 °C | 800 rpm | 35.0 dBA | Coolink Corator DS | |
| Corsair H5O | 46 K | 68 °C | 900 rpm | 35.4 dBA | CHF 113.- (EUR 81.-) | Corsair H5O |
| Alpenföhn Nordwand | 48 K | 72 °C | 700 rpm | 36.4 dBA | CHF 79.- (EUR 53.-) | Alpenföhn Nordwand |
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Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| Gelid released his new high end cooler that proved to be quite good in our test. Pull and Push capable thanks to the design and an additional clamping kit provided in the bundle makes it easily upgradable if you need more cooling capacity. Furthermore the fan of this cooler is PWM capable and has got four LED. Gelid made his new baby available for a very competitive price of CHF 45.- (est. EUR 36.-). | -
Performance - Price - Manufacturing quality - PWM fan with LED - Pull and Push capable |
- Noisy at 12 V | |
| Installation | + | - | |
| Mounting the cooler is quite easy and doesn't take a lot of time. Both mounting kits (for AMD and Intel sockets) fit well and provide good pressure onto the processor. Thanks to the mid tower profile of this cooler, you will not find any compatibility issues between the size of the cooler and your memory heatspreader. The GX-7 doesn't block any of the DIMM slots so you will be even able to install Dominator GTX from Corsair reputed for their huge heatspreader. | - Easy and robust - Compatible with Intel and AMD sockets - Springs | ||
| Performance | + | - | |
|
If you drive your Gelid fan at twelve volts it's quite noisy. We recommend to make use of PWM feature. As we drove the fans at seven Volts, with 700 rotations per minute it was almost noiseless but there also was a decrease in cooling capacity. Never the less there still is more than enough potential that even todays high-end CPUs can be cooled perfectly also at low rotation speeds. We found that it performed better than Noctua's mid tower flagship (NH-U12P) at 12 V and as good as it at 7 V. Which makes the Gelid GX-7 a good value for money. |
- Very good performance/price - Noiseless at 7v - From 600 up to 1800 rpm | ||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
|
How can't we recommend a cooler that is cheaper than the mid tower king (Noctua's NH-U12P) and performs as good ? For almost half of the price of the king, this makes the Gelid GX-7 very good value for money. |
- Desktop-PC - Gamer |
- Overclocker |
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Author: Chrictian Ney c.ney@ocaholic.ch