|
 The
first thing that strikes you about CoolerMasters heatsink and fan
combo is just how well packaged it is. Not for this baby the plain brown
cardboard box, but a well designed clear pack that shows the heatsink/fan
off to their full effect. I was however not looking forward to opening it,
as in the past similar types of packages have proved difficult to open
and have resulted in cut fingers. But trust CoolerMaster to have made sure
it opens easy, just pop the tabs on the top corners and it opens like a
dream. Inside you will find not only the heatsink/fan but a small tube of
white thermal grease and the user instructions are printed on the back of
the package.
Now to the heatsink/fan, as these things go
this is one huge and heavy beast, and its size is added to by the heat
pipes sticking out from one side. The fan itself is rated at 3000rpm and
is as near to running silent as makes no difference. What's is a heat pipe
I hear you ask, will in this case its two small pipes that run from the
base of the heatsink, out one side and back in again near the top. The way
these work is that they are hollow and are filled with a gas/liquid. This
gas/liquid boils into vapour at the base of the heatsink, rises to the
top as a gas then condenses out at the top and in the process transfers
heat. How much heat these heat pipes can move on their own is worth about
3c to 4c over a similar heat sink with out heat pipe technology.
However the is one small drawback you should be aware of, those protruding
heat pipes may well get in the way of other components on the mother
board, so check first if you can.
 1.
Hook the rear end of the clip onto the socket tip.
2. Push the front clip bar forward and
press down.
 3.
Once in position, pull bar back to secure cooler onto the socket.
The hardest part of fitting this heatsink
was in fact removing the standard heatsink that came with the cpu, this
needed a steady hand. Fitting the new heatsink is thankfully easy due to
the way the clip is designed and can be fitted in a matter of minutes. The
first thing you will notice when starting up your computer is the lack of
fan noise, that's as it should be for a fan that run's at 3000rpm.
In testing the HHC-L61 managed to do two
things at once, it lowered the temperature of the cpu by 5c overall,
throughout the cpu performance range (PIII/800). But most impressively it
managed this with significantly less sound emitted than the standard
heatsink/fan supplied by Intel. One suspects that the combination of
cooper heatsink, heat pipes and 3000rpm fan is as near perfect as a
heatsink can be made with today's technology. But we could just be wrong,
as CoolerMaster has over in the states a HSC-V62 AUTO speed CPU
Cooler with smart thermal sensor to control the fan speed. Now it does not
take to much looking into the crystal ball to see that by combining the
cooper heatsink with heat pipes with a 3000rpm auto speed smart thermal
sensor fan, that you could end up with the perfect heatsink/fan combo.
Note to CoolerMaster, make the fan an 80mm size unit, as the bigger the fan
the less sound it will make when compared to a smaller fan moving the same
amount of air per minute.
If your cpu fan is driving you nuts and
your motherboard has the room, then we highly recommend this heatsink/fan
combo.
|
