by Tony Celeste

Looking for a cool way to cool down your hot running CPU? Zerotherm has the answer with its BTF95, a butterfly shaped, 100% copper heat sink which operates so efficiently that you can run it in complete silence with no fan. Of course, an optional fan is available, for those who enjoy pushing a dual or quad core processor to its absolute limits.

This copper butterfly isn't just good-looking, it's a great cooler, too.

The secret to the BTF95's remarkable cooling ability lies in its unique engineering, which features heat pipes instead of the traditional heat sink plus fan design. The Zerotherm BTF95's heat pipes contain a coolant fluid that pulls heat away from the processor, and allows the heat to evaporate harmlessly as it travels upward toward the top of the pipes. Once the evaporated coolant fluid reaches the top of the heat pipes, it's been cooled by its journey past more than 120 copper fins, which siphon heat from the heat pipes, and dissipate it safely, away from any key components. The coolant fluid then cools and falls back to the bottom of the pipes, where it once again extracts heat from the CPU, and begins another journey toward the top.

This infinite recycling process accomplishes the same goal as a fan pulling heat away from a processor, but without fan noise, and because heat pipes are a closed system, there's no need to ever add more coolant. In addition to being noiseless, there's another important advantage to a fanless CPU cooler: you'll never need to worry about your expensive CPU being destroyed because your CPU fan decided to stop working.

The Zerotherm BTF95 is available for $51.95 to $59.99, and supports both Intel and AMD processors.