The Contenders In Detail
Intel Boxed Cooler
This cooler is included when you buy the boxed version of an Intel LGA775 CPU. It has the lowest height of the coolers compared here; measured from the top of the board, it comes to just 67 mm.
The 52 cooling fins are each split again in order to maximize surface area, to give off more heat. The fins are slightly inclined in the direction in which the fan turns, so there is as little turbulence as possible.
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.
