[Laistrygon]

So, finally I bought the much longed for ********-CPU cooler in a „non-online“ shop in my city for about 45 Euro.

The reasons for my purchase was the pretty annoying sound intensity (under full loading) and the only average cooling performance of my previous cooler, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro.

You can see the difference in size between both these coolers here


The CPU I am cooling right now is the Core 2 Duo 6600 @ default settings (for now…), the cooler is mounted via the Push-Pin-system on my Asus P5B “non-deluxe”. (Yes, it works, but the revision of the board is important; the older ones aren’t compatible with the cooler, everything from 1.03G is compatible for (pretty) sure, if anything below is also compatible, isn’t known to me.
Maybe it's also interesting to mention that I have a passive cooled Asus nVidia GeForce 7600GT, which is heating the CPU-cooler a bit, too.

This is my board.

So, let’s begin with my personal experience.

For it wasn’t certain whether the cooler really is compatible with my board, I tried to mount the cooler without the CPU inserted where it belongs. I managed it without major problems, a few minutes and it was done.

Then I cleaned the CPU (actually the heat spreader of it, but that’s splitting hair) from the used heat sink paste, put a small amount of the supplied one on it, and wanted to mount the cooler on the (built out) mainboard. I believe I needed about half an hour to get 3 ½ push pins completely through. There was one I couldn’t push through entirely, so the whole cooler wasn’t fixed very well, see here


Although it worked well the first time, the second time I mounted the cooler I thought the PushPin system was the biggest crap available on market…but I was to be surprised…
So I installed the fan like shown in the picture:


From the front:




No obstacles here...




...nor here...




...nor here...




...neith- oh, wait a minute, is there some obstacle? Oh no, false alarm...




The fan blows air towards the case-cooler at the back, which blows it out of the case. I'll show pictures of it next week, when I'm going to dismantle my PC again because of the Retention Kit.

When I built in the mainboard again and switched on the pc, I noticed the first flaw (I can’t say if it’s a flaw of the mainboard or of the fan): The fan rotates constantly with about 1300-1400 rpm, no matter what I do (BIOS settings etc.). It certainly isn’t loud, as it isn’t annoying (in contrast to my previous cooler…), but I feel it’s unnecessary to have the fan rotate on maximum when you’re just surfing or writing a customer review. Fortunately there’s a Scythe PWM-fan available for about 10-12 Euro, which I already ordered (it should arrive next week, together with the Retention Kit).
However, the first look at the temperatures was disillusioning: The same temperatures as with my AC-cooler; about 54°C case temperature and up to 69°C Core-temperature (under full load), which is way too much. So today I decided to dismount the cooler and mount it again.
When I did so, I noticed something strange: The contact face of the cooler looked like this

I search some forums, and found out, that that’s because of the uneven heatspreader of the CPU. The edge is about 0,1 mm higher than the rest of the HS.
There was the common opinion, that the only possibility how to “even” the HS is to “polish” the heatspreader, which would end in a void of the guarantee of the CPU. So this isn’t a possibility for me right now, maybe in about one year…

So I decided simply to use more heat sink paste in the middle of the CPU (although some people claimed it wouldn’t work).
To do that I needed to remove the cooler from the CPU and mount it on the board again…I only thought of the Push-Pins…but this time I was prepared! I checked how exactly the pins worked (they need to be rotated in the other direction than the arrow on them show before they are put through the mainboard; the directions that are shown on the arrows are for dismounting the cooler). This time it worked perfectly well, about one minute and the pins were! locked (in place); I also made a “U-turn”, so now the fan blows fresh air from the outside (with the support of the case-cooler) into the interior of the case, and this heated air is being blown out by a 25cm side-case-cooler.

Guess what temperatures I have now?

Idle: 32-33°C Case, 40-42°C core temperatures

Full load: 43°C Case, 54°C core temperatures.

(Ambient temperature is 26,4°C according to my thermometer)

These values aren’t that good, but they certainly are much better than the ones I had with my old cooler.


I’m sure the temperature values can and will be improved soon (with the retention kit and a more precise use of the heat sink paste), as will the sound intensity in idle-mode (which isn’t really loud, but louder than necessary), so I’m pretty satisfied with my new cooler!


EDIT:

So, here are the pictures of the cooler inside the case




I tried to mount the fan on the far side of the coolink element, just like this:



But after 10 minutes DualPrime I got about 4°C higher temperatures; maybe that's because of the missing front-fan, but so far the fan's current alignment - as seen in the first of these two pictures - is the best one (for my system).

[Shinigami]

Hi Laistrygon,

Thanks for posting this nice review. The mentioned IHS problem is sometimes showing up more often. Based on some reports you can gain around 5-10°C difference if you polish the IHS.

I would consider 54°C as good, because you get more silence and the temperatures are read from the core, this is really on the good side.

I hope especially the images can help other users. Thanks.

Greets

[Laistrygon]

Okay, now I overclocked my system up to 2995Mhz (i.e. 9x333Mhz), 1,275V Vcore.

One hour DualPrime: 45°C Case/Cover Temp., 55°C Core Temperature.

Pretty nice, I'd say

Now I'm going to mount the fan on the opposite direction, let's see whether the temperatures will drop.

EDIT: 3 Minutes Prime full load, temperatures rose about 2°C (both Core and Case/Cover)

[Shinigami]

Hey,

the long side brings you better performance, that's why it is recommended inside the manual.

But yeah, the temps seem to be nice.

Andy

[Laistrygon]

Manual? What manual?

So, here's the proof for the temperatures with an (hopefully stable, but 3h Prime should be enough) overclocked E6600.

[Shinigami]

Hey,

3h, looks OK to me
The Mugen manual, we recommend to use the fan on the long side of the heatsink.

Andy

[Laistrygon]

Yes, I'm trying to push it up to 3,2...I'm not worried about the CPU, but about my 667Mhz Corsair-RAM, which "only" has some Powerchips built in, no high-end Microns...

but anyhow, you mean it's recommended to mount the fan on the side shown in this picture



and not on the left or right side of it?

[Shinigami]

Hi,

It is recommended to mount the fan on the side you see on this image, correct.

Greetings,
Andy

[Laistrygon]

Hmm, I thought this was obvious?


btw, 3,2 Ghz stable (5 hours Orthos Prime), with 1,350V VCore (Standard VCore of my processor: 1,325V)

Core Temp. Idle: 46°C-48°C
Cover Temp. Idle: 39°C

Core Temp. Full load: 63°C
Cover Temp. Full Load: 52°C

The core temperatur under full load is still about 6°C cooler than it was with my AC Freezer 7 Pro in non-overclocked-state,, and much less noisy (actually I can't even detect a difference in the sound intensity under between idle- and full load- state (using the PWM-fan); both are equally silent).

[Shinigami]

Hi,

What is Cover temp?
Rest looks pretty much safe to me.