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[O/C]Six Premium Heatsink Shootout

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Six Premium Heatsink Shootout
by muddocktor

I will be looking at 6 different heat pipe cooling solutions with this review, with retail prices ranging from the mid-$30 range to $100. All have been looked at by other sites at one time or another, but generally are tested on a dedicated test stand setup. I will be a bit different as I am going to test them in a case on a working system and see if any surprises will be found.

extreme-performance-chart2-720x516.jpg ​
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Is that my good ol' stand on taking the lead?!?!?! The TRUE has not been toppled, folks! :clap:

Very nice write up, by the way.
 
Well after reading through it, it is obvious there is one clear winner, the owner of anyone of these coolers in the review. Excellent write up and I enjoyed reading it.:clap:
 
Thank you Chance and CgS Drone. It really did surprise me on how well the TRUE design has stood the test of time. It even hung in real close to the NH-D14 in both the quiet fan and high performance tests and with the Denki on there it was the class of the field. But none of them are a bad choice for cooling and it just goes to show how well engineered all 6 heatsinks are.

Now onto the next round of testing. ;)
 
man...that true scales really well if you're willing to deal with the noise, I thought there'd be a bit more headroom in the noctua, just based on the other stuff I've seen...in terms of quiet performance, I think the noctua wins, max performance goes to the true with a monster of a fan on it...value buy remains firmly in the hands of the true sprit.
 
Nice write-up but I am amazed at how large the CPU coolers have gotten. I'm wondering if these coolers may be as effective or more so with shorter fin length so the airflow is closer to the heat pipes? These coolers require a ton of room and can create a lot of airflow turbulence in a case. I think it's time for me to do some case airflow testing... ;)
 
Yeah, it is amazing how big these coolers have had to get to be able to deal with the heat generation of today's processors. Not so much for the dual core procs but the quads and hex cores are real heat monsters. As for the shorter fin length, I'm not sure what you are referring to. Are you taking about the thickness of them or the height of them or the width. I think they've pretty much been settling on a form factor that accommodates 120 mm fans because it is a good compromise size for cfm while remaining fairly quiet. With the old heatsinks that ran 60, 80 and 92 mm fans, you always had to run really loud, high rpm fans to get enough airflow for effective cooling when overclocking your processor hard.
 
Beenthere if I understand you right, you need the fin, the heat pipe transfer the heat from the cpu, the fin then transfers the heat from the heat pipe, the air then trasnfers the heat from the fin. You need the surface area on the fin in order to tranfer the heat to the air.
 
ooh nice, finally a well written thread about cpu heatsinks.
i can finally decide which one to get, thank you for this review :)
 
mudd you da man. :rock:
Thanks man, nice round-up, nice methodology and I love that you tested in case.
Respect.
 
CgS Drone said:
Beenthere if I understand you right, you need the fin, the heat pipe transfer the heat from the cpu, the fin then transfers the heat from the heat pipe, the air then trasnfers the heat from the fin. You need the surface area on the fin in order to tranfer the heat to the air.
Click to expand...

Yes you need fins to draw the heat out of the heat pipes but the question is what is the ideal length of fin for the application. Longer fins may actually detract from the rate of heat extracted depending on airflow velocity and volume?
 
very nice write up. and as far as size, you obviously havent seen the scythe mugen 2, that thing is huge and doesnt perform as well as the megahalems that replaced it for me. and the mega is less than half the size.
 
dejo said:
very nice write up. and as far as size, you obviously havent seen the scythe mugen 2, that thing is huge and doesnt perform as well as the megahalems that replaced it for me. and the mega is less than half the size.
Click to expand...

Sure... Next you'll tell us SIZE doesn't matter. <LOL> :burn:
 
Thanks guys. And dejo, no I haven't messed with the mugen 2. Since I am presently having to buy what I test I have to limit myself. Hopefully I can pick up some review samples in the future from manufacturers so the costs won't be so bad. And that way I could put out of my money into upgrading monitoring equipment, like a temp monitor that will interface with the OS and keep accurate records of temps at various places inside the case. That is my next upgrade in the future for my test rig.
 
A couple suggestions for the report:

- I'm assuming all fans were at 100% at all times?

- Any chance of doing a control test with the stock cooler? I know it might be hard with the overclock, but it would give people an idea of the delta improvement all of these heat sinks provide.

Still, a great review as is!

eric
 
Yes, all fans were run at 100%. The only fan of the bunch that is a PWM fan is the one that came on the True Spirit and I set the bios to run it at 100% too. And I thought of including the stock fan in there too, but then the stock 980X heatsink isn't the same as the one that comes with the lower tier i7 procs either. But with the proc at the same overclock the temps with the stock heatsink were at least 10 C higher than the aftermarket heatsinks. Ultimately, I decided not to include the stock fan data in the roundup because it wasn't in the same league as the heatsinks tested. And to tell the truth, it is as noisy or noisier than the setups running the Scythes in push-pull and the NH-D14 with 3 Yates installed. But I will give Intel that it's a better heatsink choice than what they included with my last Extreme proc, the QX9650.
 
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