Socket 775 and AM2 heatsink roundup

Mike D. 11 Dec, 2007 at 1:00am ET Article published in Tech

UPDATE: Also check out Part 2, with two more heatsinks.

It has been quite some time since Icrontic reviewed a heatsink, so we thought we’d get back into the scene with a bang. Today, we’ll be taking a look at six top-notch heatsinks from Scythe, Coolink, Tuniq and Thermalright.

It is really amazing just how far heatsinks have come over the last few years. It seems like just yesterday that top of the line HSFs employed small 60mm fans and heatpipes were unheard of. Times certainly have changed. Today, heatsinks are bigger than ever and 120mm fans are the norm.

As new CPUs keep getting hotter, heatsink manufacturers continue to push the limits with more and bigger heatpipes, tighter fin arrays and all sorts of other tricks of the trade. Performance levels once thought only possible with water-cooling have been achieved by many of the latest and greatest air coolers.

The six heatsinks we are going to be looking at today are all unique. Although there are similarities between them, they each try to go the extra mile with unique design elements for better performance and reduced noise. As history has shown, performance cannot be judged by specifications and appearance alone.

Let’s take a look at the competition!

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Comments

16 Dec 2007 ~ 11:22pm shwaip hmm...the orders of the heatsinks on the graphs change...it's a little confusing. It would be easier to compare if the order was always the same, IMO.
16 Dec 2007 ~ 11:33pm Leonardo Thanks for well-done review. Information I can use. It was easy to read and digest.
17 Dec 2007 ~ 3:51am TheLostSwede Excellent review and ver well written Mike. I actually like the way you had the graphs written. The best one on top.
17 Dec 2007 ~ 6:04am Thelemech This article has perfect timing(in my world ), as it will help me to build my next machine. Great work Mike D and cheers for the editing Thrax!
17 Dec 2007 ~ 10:21am QCH Holy cow... that's one massive roundup. Very good job and I was amazed at the variety of the heatsink designs.

Also... where DID you get that fancy AMD heatsink.
17 Dec 2007 ~ 6:20pm lemonlime Thanks for the kind words all. It was a lot of work but I was pleased with the end result. I've already got two more heatsinks on the way that will be running through the same methodology.

QCH2002 wrote:

Also... where DID you get that fancy AMD heatsink.

Thanks again, Q!

Keebler wrote:

Also, big ups to brudda' Thrax for helping out with some serious editing business to get it marked up for the new CMS.

Thrax: Thanks very much for [strike]fixing my terrible grammar[/strike] tagging everything! really appreciate it.
17 Dec 2007 ~ 6:24pm lemonlime Also, didn't bother including this in the review but for anyone interested:

Ambient readings for all of the tests:
17 Dec 2007 ~ 7:18pm Leonardo Deviation from the mean ambient temperature did not exceed 0.5C. That's very good. I have nowhere in my house where I could accomplish that. I suppose I could in the garage on a sub-zero night if I were to open the garage doors and leave them open. But, I'd have to just leave my hands in my parka's pockets and just look at the computer parts, not actually doing anything with them.
18 Dec 2007 ~ 1:03am Garg That was one incredibly thorough and informative review, LL!

It was especially nice for me, since I stay comfortably behind the curve on hardware, and the SLK-900 was the last heatsink I used (before switching to equally antiquated water cooling systems, that is ).

Kudos! Great photography in tight places, too.
20 Dec 2007 ~ 1:56pm Snarkasm I've been meaning to ask: is the Mugen essentially just a rebrand of the Scythe Infinity, or is there some difference I'm not seeing? That's exactly what my Infinity looks like.
20 Dec 2007 ~ 4:17pm BuddyJ Same heatsink, different fans.
20 Dec 2007 ~ 7:10pm Snarkasm Thank you, sir. I replaced the fan anyway with a pair of higher-CFM ones. Great sink all the same.
20 Dec 2007 ~ 8:04pm Nightwolf Very helpful review!
23 Dec 2007 ~ 12:34am muddocktor Nice review, Mike. Too bad you didn't have an U-120 eXtreme and a regular U-120 to test too though as both of those are stellar performers, if you get them with a decent base. As for the Tuniq, you called it exactly right about the AM2 mount being an afterthought. Tuniq developed the TT120 before AM2 was on the market and the original versions (including mine) didn't have any way to mount to AM2 included at all. They cobbled together the AM2 mount some time after AM2 came to market. That's why the mounting for LGA775 and socket 754/939/940 is soooooo much better. BTW, try that TT120 out on a socket 939 Opty or X2 system and watch how well it works.
29 Dec 2007 ~ 8:39pm Ultra-Nexus Great article, specially the simple, but effective way of testing base flatness!
Thank you!
29 Dec 2007 ~ 9:53pm Leonardo Oh yes, I want to reiterate what Ultra stated about flatness testing. I used that test a week ago when I decided to lap CPUs and heatsinks. It saved me time, indicating which were not flat and which did not need servicing. As it turns out, the only truly flat heatsink base among my Q6600 rigs was the Zalman 9700 NT. BTW, the Zalman's base is nickel coated.