Heatsink Test – Joe
SUMMARY: Big, low noise and decent cooling.
The good guys at Thermal Transtech were nice enough to send a sample of their nPowerTEK NPH Big heatsink to test out. This is a bit different from other heatpipes in that the heatpipe is one large column:
The heat column runs through the fins, cooled by a 120 mm fan.
The base appears adequately flat; I used the Poor Man’s Flatness Test and it looks like there might be some high spots on it:
Parts that ship with the unit for Intel 775 mounting:
The NPH Big was tested on an Asus P5WD2 motherboard P4 Motherboard Test Platform with a modified Pentium D 805 to read CPU case temps (both supplied by Directron). The NPH Big was tested with the fan that is included.
| Heatsink | Case Temp | Ambient Temp | C/W | On-Die Temp¹ |
| NPH Big, 1659 rpm, <50 dBA² | 41.6 | 26.1 | 0.16 | 50 |
¹MBM on-die temperatures.
²50 dBA measured 8″ from the fan intake corresponds to about 30 dBA measured 3 feet from the fan, a very quiet noise level.
Results place the NPH Big in mid-rank of heatsinks tested to date (Heatsink Ranking).
The nPowerTEK NPH Big does a very nice cooling job and the included fan is quiet – a nice package for decent cooling at low noise.
Thanks again to Thermal Transtech for sending this our way to try out.
Disclosure: Joe Citarella has a financial interest in a company developing thermosyphon products for electronic chip cooling.
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