TennMax is one of the most well known companies in the video cooler market and made quite a name for themselves with their Lasagna and Stealth V2 coolers. The Stealth V2 Cooler was a success in the Voodoo2 market, but the Lasagna was one of the first video chip coolers to have a huge impact on the industry, going so far as to be included on some retail boards. The TennMax Stealth V3 Fighter follows directly in these footsteps and actually resembles the Lasagna quite a bit.

The V3 Fighter comes in a rather non-descript white box and its diminutive size may initially surprise you. The heatsink is barely wider than the Voodoo3 chip itself and with its recessed fan, the unit's height is the same as a regular heatsink. The Stealth V3 Fighter is not a standard heat sink/fan combination like you find in your local PC bargain bin, but a unified design intended to be as compact as possible. The cooling fan is actually inside the heat sink and serves to make your V3 Fighter upgrade as unobtrusive as possible. If you've got a crowded PC case, the flush design will still let you use the PCI slot below the Voodoo3.

Don't let the size fool you; the Stealth V3 Fighter gives you a lot of cooling real estate to work with. The purpose of any heatsink is to enlarge the overall cooling area of the chip. This is why the best heatsinks are both large and feature a varying level of topography, with ridges, grooves or any sort of trick to increase its overall surface size. Since the Stealth V3 Fighter is so small, TennMax has taken a different tack to their cooler design. Instead of making a huge cooler, they've created a miniature-cooling marvel. The heatsink itself is made up of several metallic layers, each with a flat surface and space between for airflow. It's a brilliant design, since it allows for a flush heatsink while magnifying its surface area quite nicely. Integrating the cooling fan inside the heatsink also does double duty, allowing the slim layout and forcing air between each of the cooler's metallic layers.