Sapphire is well-known for its high-performance AMD graphics cards, largely made possible through the firm's custom cooling solutions. In more recent years, the company has begun to branch out into mainboards and mini-PCs. Building upon its strength in cooling, Sapphire has announced its first-ever CPU cooling solution, the 'Vapor-X CPU Cooler.'

This 135x110.4x163.5mm cooler is rated at 200W and is universally mountable to Intel and AMD form factors, right from the Athlon and Pentium and all the way to the latest FX and Core i7 Extreme beasts. Vapor-X cooling sees a vapour chamber placed directly onto the CPU for super-speedy heat extraction, ideal for heavy overclockers, where hotspots and initial heat extraction are the limiting factors to achieving a stable overclock.

Final cooling is accomplished by two 120 mm fans, which the firm claims to run at a maximum of noise level of 40dBA whilst spinning at 2,200RPM, shuffling 77CFM of airflow each. Under a less-stressed scenario, these fans will ramp down all the way to 495RPM, which Sapphire claims to be extremely low noise.

Airflow has been optimised for RAM cooling and the enclosure itself attempts to be compact for easy placement. LED lighting adds a little flair to this sleek cooler.

With an SEP of $69, the Vapor-X is certainly an interesting candidate. We took a look at a pre-production sample back in July and will review a full-production model in the coming days.