Nice article but...

[gregorarch]

Nice to finally see a decent round up of a range of heatsinks, but there's one vital piece of information missing: the thermal efficiency of each sink. At least you could have told us the estimated heat load for the tests so we could figure it our ourselves.

I mean, if a heatsink review only includes ONE piece of information, it should be the thermal efficiency in degC/W.

Other than that, excellent article. Interesting to see those big round Thermaltake / Titan type coolers doing badly. Perhaps having no fins over the CPU core has something to do with it?

 

[Guest]

No kidding. I'm shocked to see no mention of that spec.

Also, there is no mention of what thermal compounds are used for each cooling solution in the test.

And if I'm not mistaken, when you use a socket 370 cooler on a socket A processor, don't you run a great risk of crushing the die!?!?!?

Hate to say it but I think I may start looking elseware for cooling reviews. Any suggestions where to look?

 

[gregorarch]

Overclockers.com often do good heatsink tests, using a proper testbench setup (ie a known and controllable thermal load and decent sensors, not those useless mobo sensors) - they pretty much always quote thermal conductivity based on a couple of different loads. They just don't get to do as many reviews as I might like...

 

[Guest]

Nice Article !!!!!! You gotta be joking! It was total pants, no details of any tests, did they test under load? Did they see the cooling efficency when bringing the temp down? How did they arrive at the conclusion that the copper hedgehog is so crap! I swapped my cooler master for a copper hedgehog and saw dramatic improvemnts to my temp,couldn't hit a gig with my 850 Tbird before, at 1060 now,10'c cooler!!!
I read a lot of stuff on coolers before I splashed out on a copper hedgehog, every single review rated it as supremo the fact that Toms is so different really raises some questions!

 

[jg38141]

A couple thoughts- Maybe the hedgehog raves were hype- In theory It should do better and maybe that's what the other reviews were based on. It is nice and shiney though. I'll give it that. Seriously though I'd like to see that one retested, I don't understand why it didn't do better.
Also- Everyone Keeps Putting The Thermaltake and Titan Reviews Together!! I own neither, but the titan did badly, the thermaltake beat the hedgehog, performed dead average on temp., and did so quietly. This is not a bad heatsink! Everyone including the reviwer grouped it with the other, even though they performed very different. Let's not have "round" prejudice here.

"Are you saying that I can dodge bullets?"

 

[Guest]

The article was pretty good but I find the data on the hedgehog to be inaccurate. I've read every review that has come out on the hedgehog, and everyone has glowing praise for it. I don't understand how it could have performed so poorly. I have one in my system w/ a delta fan and its by far the best heatsink/fan combo I've ever used, the only downside is the noise.

<center>
<A HREF="mailto:alex@phataudio.org">Alex Valentine</a>
</center>

 

[Guest]

Well there's always some badeggs (chuckle) for heatsinks... Picked up an elcheapo aluminum SECC cooler for my PIII 733, didn't want to spend huge amounts of money on a cooler to see if an engineering sample CPU I got for free from a friend would work or not...

However, as it's generic, there's no logo for the manufacturer, just a standard "PC Cooler" box w/Made In Taiwan on it... Ran me around $10 at a local PC parts store...

I was pretty much unimpressed by looking at it, in fact, I still have to lap the die contact, it isn't a mirror finish to say the least... Here's the skinny:

Standard SECC size cooler, 1" fins, approximately 1 mm thick plate cast aluminum... Fan is a minimum of 5000 RPM cooler (sensor reads it as running 5300 on average), thermal compound is Arctic Silver...

So lets see, about $10 for a cooler, and lets see what my thermal reading is, PIII 733 marginally OC'd to 750... 31C! So this also goes to show that sometimes it's fun to blow half a week's salary on a cooler, sometimes it's the cheaper components that help...

 

[toonces]

what i want to know is how he can say the thermaltake performed "below average". what does that mean? average compared to what? in all the scores he showed, they seemed to demonstrate that the chrome orb is exactly that, average. or at least middle of the road of the heatsinks tested.

another huge omission...

price? how about a price to efficiency graph?

<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>

 

[Guest]

I think the article was not one in typical Tomshardware fashion. They should a "RECOUNT".

I think the hedgehog was a lemon as all other reviews have it peggged as the best.

I have an FOP 32 and it is awesome. Sad thing is that it keeps the chip cooler then the stock intel but I can only "still" get 980 Mhz (137 FSB w/ 1.70 v)out of my PIII 700 Flip Chip. Intel HS/Fan not a bad unit.

Bill P

 

[jg38141]

I'm pretty bummed the reviewer hasn't replied here. If you're gonna post a review, at least back it up.

"Are you saying that I can dodge bullets?"

 

[toonces]

i suspect an outsider! he probably doesn't even know about the community section, or he realizes the error of his way and is too proud to actually do something about it.

<font color=red>booyah, grandma, booyah..</font color=red>