Thermaltake Massive23 CS Notebook Cooler

Today for review I’ve got another notebook or netbook cooler from our friends over at Thermaltake called the Massive23 CS. Not long ago I reviewed the Massive23 ST so the name might sound familiar, but the Massive23 CS is a bit different in that it’s all aluminum, the design is more open, and the fan features LEDs to add a bit of color to your day. I’ve tested it with both my Acer Aspire One D250 and the new Ion based HP Mini 311 netbook to see how well it handles the heat, so read on to learn more about the Massive23 CS and how it performs…

Info:

Massive23 CS

Compatibility: For 10″ ~ 17″ Notebook
Heatsink Dimension: 360 (L) x 319 (W) x 52 (H) mm / 14.17 (L) x 12.56  (W) x 2.05 (H) in
Heatsink Material: Aluminum
Fan Dimension: 200 x 200 x 20 mm
Fan Speed: 600 ± 200 RPM
Noise Level: 17 dBA
Max. Air Flow: 57 CFM
Max. Air Pressure: 0.37 mmH2O
LED Fan: Multi-Color LED Fan (x1)
Power Connector: USB
Rated Voltage: 5 V
Started Voltage: 3.5 V
Rated Current: 0.22 A
Weight: 1610 g

What’s in the Box?

The Massive23 CS comes packaged well inside of a nicely designed box with pictures and information on it. There’s a brief user manual included and a USB power cable.

The USB cable is nice and long, it includes an on/off power switch in-line making it easy to turn it on and off.

The Massive232 CS is all aluminum making it a bit on the heavy side, but not so much that it won’t be portable. Pretty much the entire thing is a mesh screen, with a solid border on the side and top and bottom. The bottom does have a non-slip rubber strip on it to keep the laptop in place and also to be used as a wrist rest.

The fan is a large 200mmm fan, it’s clear with LEDs in it. You’ll see them lit up farther in the review.

The Massive23 CS is made at an angle that should allow for comfortable viewing and typing.

On the you’ll find the power connection and the fan color LED push button switch. It can be pushed in to cycle through the various color modes of the fan.

Installation and Performance:

There is nothing to the installation process, just set you netbook or laptop on it and then plug it into a free USB port.

Here’s my full sized Dell Latitude C640 on the massive23 CS:

Next up is the HP Mini 311:

and finally here’s the Acer Aspire One D250 on the Massive23 CS:

Ok, so we have some example of how a notebook and netbook look on the Massive23 CS, that doesn’t tell us much except maybe about the size of things compared.

Before we get into testing here’s the pictures of the fan powered on. You can have single solid colors, or multiple colors, it makes for an interesting effect, and the LEDs aren’t that bright so they won’t bother you in low light.

For my testing I already know that most laptop coolers will not cool my Dell laptop, it’s just the way it’s designed, so I didn’t even bother testing with it.  That’s one thing about a product like this, for it to work correctly the netbook or laptop has to be designed in a certain way that allows for the cooling to actually work.

I know these types of coolers will cool my Acer Aspire One D250, but I just got the HP Mini 311 so I thought I’d test it out with that one as well.

Ambient room temperature during testing was 21.5C (+/- .3C).

I had both netbooks plugged into their power supply, in other words not running on batteries.

I used Orthos Stress Prime to get full load on the CPU, and I used Coretemp to record the temperatures.

The Idle temperate is the temperature of the CPU after the netbook has been powered on and has sit for 15 minutes. The load temperature is the maximum temperature the CPU reached during 30 minutes of 100% load.  I did let it run past 30 minutes but never saw the maximum temperature go past the same as it was at the 30 minute mark.

I tested three different things, on my wooden table, on the MAssive23 CS with the fan turned off or passive cooling and then with the fan turned on.

So here’s some pretty graphs for you to see the results.

The first is the Acer Aspire One D250 temps:

As you can see we got a nice drop in both Idle and Load temperatures while using the Thermaltake Massive23 CS. There’s about a seven degree difference with the fan turned on as to having the netbook just sitting on the table. I should also note that the fan is virtually silent so it won’t bother you when working, listening to music or watching a video.

Next I have testing with the HP Mini 311 and we see something quite a bit different here in the results:

With the HP Mini 311 we don’t really see much of any difference with passive cooling, and only a few degrees drop with the fan turned on. This just goes to show an example of what I said earlier, it all depend on the design of the netbook or laptop as to how well a product like a cooling pad will affect it. Still though cooler is better, and with the fan on we do see a nice drop in temperatures.

Conclusion:

The Thermaltake MAssive23 CS is no doubt a good performing product, it’s well made and should keep your netbook or laptop cooler even without the fan on.  The cooling performance you get from the Massive23 CS though will depend on the design of your netbook, but no matter the design you should get some sort of cooling from the Massive23 CS.

The Massive23 CS is rather large and on the heavy side so I don’t think I’d be carrying it with me everyday, but it would be nice to leave it one place like the office so it’s there when you need it.

The MSRP is about $60, so it might be considered expensive by some, but it’s well made, and it does perform well, so you’ll have to weigh the performance you’ll get versus the cost to see if it’s really worth it to you personally.

Pros:

+Well made
+Cools well
+Looks great
+Virtually silent fan
+Fan can change colors or be turned off

Cons:

-Might be considered expensive
-A bit on the heavy side
-Not a pass through USB cable

I would like to thank Thermaltake for the chance to review the Massive23 CS and for their support of iGadget Life.

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Disclosure: This product was given to iGadgetLife for review by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for the review, we do not, and never will, accept payment from companies to review their products.

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