Sibak AC01

SUMMARY: Interesting design, OK peformance.

SIBAK is a new company on the cooling scene and one of their entries, the Sibak AC-01-625B, is one of their more interesting designs. It’s a radial fin design with a copper core.

The base

is fairly smooth – I could not feel any machining marks. There vents allow some air to cool the CPU carrier, but it’s minimal.

The back

has a rather incongruous inscription. What’s more interesting is what’s inside:

The copper core runs top to bottom, contacting the fins at each end. The problem I see with this is the limited contact area between the copper core and the aluminum fins – more surface area contact would most likely increase heat transfer. In addition, as with so many copper-aluminum matings, the quality of the bond between the two is critical to performance.

The clip requires a screwdriver to mount/dismount on the socket. Although a pain, it’s very secure. Interesting to note that the rear clip engages all three lugs while the front only one.

The fan is not particularly noisy – I measured noise levels 8″ from the fan’s intake with a Radio Shack sound meter at 61 dBA – slightly less than a YS Tech 26 cfm (manufacturers measure fan noise something like 3 feet away).

The Sibak was first tested on the CPU Die Simulator which gives results that are unaffected by motherboard influences. The Sibak was then run on a Shuttle AK31 – MBM is the in-socket diode reading.

Interpreting C/W: For every watt the CPU radiates, the heatsink will cool the core by the (C/W x watts) plus ambient temp. For example, at an ambient temp of 25 C, a C/W of 0.25 with a CPU radiating 50 watts means that the CPU core temp will be 50 x 0.25 = 12.5 C over ambient temp, or 37.5 C. The lower the C/W, the better.

Die Simulator results place the Sibak in the lower ranks of heatsinks (Heatsink Ranking). Note the 9C difference between the XP diode reading and the in-socket diode.

The Sibak AC-01-625B is nice to look at and an interesting design, but falls short of top rank performance. An OK heatsink for non-critical applications.

Thanks again to SIBAK for sending this sample our way. Sibak is looking for distribution – contact details:

SIBAK COOLER (explotech co., ltd)
5F, No. 114 Tein Mu East Raod
Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
886-2-28772086, fax 886-2-28771142
Email Sibak
Some background on SIBAK from Computex.

Email Joe