The Contenders In Detail
Intel Boxed Cooler
Tidiness in the installation: clips for the connecting cable are fitted to the cooler.
The cooler is slightly flattened on two sides; otherwise its structural shape is largely identical to the RCBFH sample.
Copper is expensive, so Intel did not go for a full copper core. The drawn-up edge does ensure good heat transfer, however.
The fan blades are inadequately protected, so the user should be careful not to put a hand near the cooler while the computer is running. (Our editorial staff got quite a few bloody fingers during testing!) That said, there is more protection provided here than on the engineering samples - on those, the fan ran completely unprotected.
As is the case of almost all the models, the cooler has the new four-pin connector, which permits temperature-controlled speed regulation.
During our stress test the cooler ran at full speed, reaching a noise level of 46.3 dB(A), which still allowed work in a relaxed manner. What is interesting is the result for thermal resistance. The cooler reaches just 0.37 K/W with the heat-conducting paste supplied with it, which is applied to the cooler in a similar way to a heat-conducting pad. When conventional heat-conducting paste is used, the thermal resistance rises to 0.51 K/W! For this reason, we recommend that you use the accompanying heat-conducting paste. As noted above, the cooler is included in the items supplied with the "boxed" version Pentium 4 CPUs. It cannot be bought separately.