thoughts on that new Swiftech

[ReNeG@dE]

That thing looks quite impressive, however one of the comments was that it comes close to water cooling performance. I have a PEP66 w/Delta 38CFM and while it's loud, I don't really have a problem with it since I wanted the improved cooling of the Delta instead of the reduced noise of the YS Tech fan I also could have ordered. But the 80mm Delta running at full speed is rated with a higher db than even the 60mm Delta! Plus the fact that it costs $79.95 for an AMD system and >$80 for a P4! If I'm going to spend that kind of money on CPU cooling I would just buy a water cooling setup. Then I'd have water cooling performance (not just CLOSE to water cooling performance) and with less noise (depending on the system I'd probably just mount a couple of quiet sunon120mm fans for the radiator). The only problem I'd have is that my case isn't really large enough for water cooling so I'd probably have to go out and get a full tower case, which I could use anyway.

What are your thoughts on that beast? would you spend $80US on air-cooling for your CPU?

 

[TechnoFile]

I personally would not spend that much for a HSF, unless it offers unbelievable performance at low noise levels. There are, however, alot of people out there that are unwilling to make the step up to more exotic(and dangerous) cooling methods - like watercooling. A decent watercooling setup can be had for that much, and I would(and will be soon) go that route. Of course, some of the newer T-birds get great overclocking results without producing gobs of heat, so for those watercooling may be nothing more that window dressing.
Basically, I think it'll sell pretty well... for a high end HSF(which I'm sure is a pretty small market). Some people may like it, others may not. I'll bet its pretty loud, and if you use the rheostat to turn the "volume" down, how will impact the cooling? Would the thing turn into another mediocre cooler with acceptable noise levels? Or would it still outperform all the others?

 

[dimmreaper]

My second machine is wet cooled. Let me just say this. As the heat output (watts) of CPUs increase, water cooling will keep temps down, any heatsink will more quickly loose ground. If Joe were to test that swiftec on a 1.2GHz Tbird along side a water cooling rig. He would notice the performance gap between the Heatsink and water rig widen as thermal load increases.

I just don't think that swiftech is worth the money. My guess is that it was designed to cater to the hydro-phobes out there.