Screens on AIO water cooling blocks are obviously a bit of a thing. But a screen on an air cooler? Give it up for the Lamptron ST060, delivering what you probably didn’t know you need at a price you almost certainly don’t want to pay.
The ruse here involves a mostly conventional CPU air cooler, albeit a fairly hefty example of the breed measuring roughly six-by-six-by-five inches and rated as capable of dissipating 260W of heat. It supports a range of Intel CPU sockets, from LGA 1366 through LGA 1700 and LGA 2011, plus AMD AM4 and AM5 sockets.
So far, so par for the high-end air cooler course. The first hint that the Lamptron ST060 is a bit different is the 299 euro list price on Caseking (via Techspot). Now, that’s including circa 20% of VAT. So, call it 250 euros pre-VAT or about $275. Ouch.
The premium, of course, is for the six-inch LCD screen slapped directly on top of the cooler. It’s full HD with 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, which will make for very crisp visuals on such a small panel.
No other specs for the screen are available, but it connects via HDMI and USB-A. You get a bundled USB drive with the necessary drivers and software for the screen.
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So, yeah, that’s the first issue. You going to have cables running in and out of this thing, slightly undermining what must surely be the point of it, namely to look snazzy inside your case.
We’re not totally clear on the technicalities, but very likely the screen just runs as a conventional secondary monitor over HDMI, with USB providing the power and what appears to be a bespoke Lamptron app designed to run full-screen on the six-inch panel and thus show various info including temps, frequencies and the rest.
You should, of course, be able to stick frankly whatever you like on the display, so your options are likely pretty much infinite.
Were we being really picky, for this type of display, a wireless interface might be preferable to minimise cable clutter. After all, latency isn’t going to be critical. Maybe the whole thing could have its own Arm chip and OS, touchscreen functionality and run off motherboard header power. Now that would be clever. And even more expensive.
In the meantime, this will still look pretty cool. And if you subscribe to the philosophy that more screens is always a good thing, well, your cooler has arrived.