Date:
Thursday , November 01, 2007
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Mega-Heatsink Roundup - 0407

Big bucks for big units! We pull out the stops and put 10 big bad cooling systems and heatsinks to the test. What coolers deliver you the best temperature drop for your hard earned dollar? We spell it out for you on a unit by unit basis.

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CONCLUSION

We saw a lot of coolers, ran some tests and got quite a bit of data. But what does it all mean? Does declaring one heatsink the winner give you the entire picture? We don't believe it does. In fact we think that calling one single unit “the winner” can cause more confusion and spread misinformation than it serves to help you with your buying decision. So rather than just point out who had the lowest temperatures, which anyone can do by looking at the graphs, we are going to break it down into a few categories that will hopefully be positioned to help our readers out a bit better since what we have here is a field of good heatsink equipment.

Most Versatile

Coolermaster GeminII - Deciding on a versatile heatsink means picking a heatsink that will allow you to use it in different ways and with different fans. As the only heatsink that can potentially keep that hot RAM of your cool, this was an easy choice. Being able to mount larger 38mm thick fans also allows you to keep everything quiet which is an added bonus to having room for two 120mm fans. While we tested this heatsink with one fan to keep the field level, we are confident adding a second fan will only increase the cooling capacity making this a very formidable cooler.

Best Value

For this award there will be a grouping of coolers as the performance was so close throughout the entire field. We will take the performance of the Intel stock cooler at load and subtract the temperature of each cooler at load to come to our delta. We then take this score and divide it into the cost of each cooler to come to a price to performance ratio. This will let us evaluate each cooler evenly for their value. While a cooler can score the best out of any heatsink tested, if it is an order of magnitude more expensive then we calculate its value to be low. Here is a graph of our totals.

FrozenCPU was used for all prices except ZEROtherm. For this cooler Newegg was referenced for cost.

Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme / Tuniq Tower 120 - With only three cents separating their price/performance ratio, these two coolers really earn their sticker price. While some coolers may have performed equally in our tests, their higher price lowers their overall value. This is also useful for those who may not have the extra money to spend on the higher end cooler but still want something that will perform well.

Best Performance

This is the award given to the heatsink that beats all others hands down with no thought given to cost. This is for the group of enthusiasts than need maximum cooling with no compromise.

CoolIT Freezone - With a Peltier cooled water system called MTEC, the Freezone was able to best all of the competitors here today if only by a bit. When turned up to the maximum setting this cooler dropped the hammer on the temps at the expense of noise. But that's what headphones are for, right? Designed for the enthusiast who absolutely must overclock their system, don't even think about using this system at stock speeds.

Best Looking

This is the award given out to the heatsink that in our opinion has that extra cool factor to it. Regardless of how it performs or how much it costs this cooler will command the attention of all who see it.

ZEROtherm NV120 - With its deep blue chromed fins and its blue LED fan, this cooler has a lot to show off. It doesn't hurt that this cooler performs pretty well either. If you want a cooler that looks awesome and really has a style all its own then this is one cooler worth your attention.

Heatpipes - Full Length vs Half Length

While no award is being given out in here, it is important to point out a very important detail our testing uncovered. Every single cooler that used full length heatpipes, regardless of how many, scored equal or lower temperatures than those with half length heatpipes. To put it simply, a cooler tested here today with three full length heatpipes performed better than a heatsink with six half length heatpipes. While there is a lot more to a heatsink than just how many pipes it has on it, I found it very interesting that the results turned out the way they did even if the difference was only a few degrees.

 

The Bottom Line

Our testing here shows at least one thing, and that is the overall field of heatsinks we find out there today are generally very solid products. Is a 3 degree better cooler a trade off for one that mounts up easily and saves you some time on an install? Is one that has multiple install kits a better value for you, or do you want one that looks as cool as it works? Obviously those are questions you will need to answer for yourself. Assuredly though, today’s cooler market is one that is deep in quality products.

Discussion

Please join our HardForum discussion about these coolers.