Socket 775 and AM2 heatsink roundup

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

Coolink Silenator

The Coolink brand products produced by “Kolink International” may not be familiar to our North American readers as their products were sold primarily in Asia up until 2005. Coolink products are now available across Europe as well. Their primary focus is on “Quiet” PC cooling accessories. Kolink has sent us their “Coolink Silenator” — a tower heatsink with their bundled “Silent whisper fan.” You may recognize the design of the Silenator. If you think it looks a lot like the Noctua NH-U12F, you are correct. There is one notable difference, however: The NH-U12F has one additional U shaped heatpipe and a different bundled fan. Aside from that, they are identical.

Image courtesy of Coolink

The Silenator is tall but actually thin which helps with compatibility. Fin density is not very tight, which should allow it to perform well with a lower CFM fan as well.

Coolink Silenator Specifications

From: http://www.coolink-europe.com

Height: 153mm (Fanless)
Width: 126mm (Fanless)
Depth: 60mm (Fanless)
Weight:640g (With fan)
Material: Copper (base and heat-pipes), aluminium (cooling fins), soldered joints
Included Fan Dimensions: 120 x 120 x 25 mm
Noise Level:14-24dBA
Air Flow: 54-90m³/h
Speed: 900-1600RPM
Bearing Type: Double Ball Bearing

The Silenator came packaged in a high-quality box with essential information and technical specifications The window on the front gives a glimpse of the icy cold blue and white “Whisper Quiet Fan” that is included.

It is important to note that the Silenator does not include mounting hardware for all three-socket types as pictured. All three were included for review purposes, but you’ll have to select the correct one for your system. There are LGA775, AM2 and K8 versions are available for purchase, so it is up to the buyer to select the correct edition. Since all three socket-mounting kits include heavy duty backplates, this decision was likely made to keep costs down. It still would have been nice to see a full range of compatibility in the box.

As me mentioned earlier, the Silenator is almost identical to the Noctua NH-U12F minus one “U-shaped” heatpipe. Overall, the Silenator has a high-quality feel to it. It would have been nice to see some polished caps for the heatpipe ends — but this is only an aesthetic consideration.

Notice the shaped fins. This provides additional surface area and the central region being inwardly curved provides some extra spacing allowing it to act as a fan shroud of sorts. There are also some punched out holes in the fins to provide some increased surface area for heat dissipation. You can see that the heatpipes are soldered to the fins for better heat conduction as well.

The base is somewhat textured, but it is very flat. It passed the glass pane and straight edge test with flying colours. Some time was definitely taken to ensure a quality base. Good work, Coolink!

Socket 775 Installation

Installation of the Silenator was not difficult. The backplate used is a well-developed X-shaped plate, which is for good LGA 775 compatibility. The backplate and front mounts are secured first as can be seen below.

Once the heatsink was tightened down using the spring-loaded screws, it felt very secure. Again, it was as if the heatsink was designed for the P5K-E: tight, but no clearance issues at all. For anyone wondering, it is much easier to install the heatsink without the fan mounted. Once it is tightened down, it is easy to load the fan with the included clips.

Socket AM2 Installation:

Installing the Silenator on our AM2 test platform was somewhat complicated, but yielded an excellent mount in the end. Well worth the extra effort involved in my opinion.

Installing the backplate and front mounts was easy. There are insulating washers below the metal brackets. It fit perfectly and there were no obstructions on either side of the board. I was a little concerned when I thought that I couldn’t mount the Silenator in the orientation I wanted. I assumed that the heatsink could only be rotated by 180 degrees — not so at all. I’d like to commend Coolink for the excellent manual that was included; all necessary information, including information on
alternate mounting orientations was included.

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The bracket for rotation was easy to install but it makes getting the spring-loaded clips installed more complicated. I was scratching my head as to how I would tighten those. After referring to the manual once again, it seems that quite a bit of thought went into it. There is a hole running the entire height of the heatsink. An included specialty screwdriver made getting them in place a snap — two big thumbs up for an intelligent design with thoughtful documentation.

The mount felt very secure, does not budge, and was expertly developed. The DIMM slots were not obstructed at all, nor were any other components. The Silenator and Noctua design really shines as far as compatibility is concerned. There won’t be many boards that will have an issue with this heatsink. Again, good show, Coolink!

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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.