IntroductionA whole year passed since our
last roundup of Pentium 4 heatsinks, as with the Athlon XP roundup I did in
August we see the integration of heat pipes on a lot of the high end models.
This will be a to the point review, each heatsink will be evaluated on easiness of use and installation, compatibility with different platforms and of course its performance will be thoroughly tested.
This review is split into 3 parts; The first part describes each heatsink in detail with pictures, good/bad points and performance with different fans and settings. In the second part I put up all heatsink in one large table with the fan configuration which has proven best in the separate tests. And finally the last part consists of extra tests with a conclusive thought.
This review is part of an even bigger one as I continue to receive P4 heatsinks for review; the newcomers will be evaluated in the upcoming part 2. This review is all about the following contestants:
Aerocool DP-102
Aerocool HT-101
Coolermaster Hyper6
Coolermaster Vortex
Evercool CUW8-715
Scythe FCS-50
Scythe NCU2000
Speeze Coppersnake
Swiftech MCX478-V
Thermalright SP-94
Thermalright XP-90
Thermalright XP-120
TTIC NPH-1
So let’s get on with the show
Test setup
My trusty P4 2.4 "C" was dusted off and ready for another 40+ hour of torture testing:
all results were taken with room temperature at ~25°C, but temp fluctuations, different mounting and user error can account up to 1-2°C of inaccuracy in the obtained results. Please keep this in mind when looking at the results. Each heatsink was tested repeatedly; if I got questionable results I restarted the test.
Setup was installed in a case less environment
System was stressed by running two instances of CPU Burn for 30min (after Thermal Compound’s burn-in); this application pushes the temperature higher then any other application or game I’ve yet encountered.
An aluminum P4 default heatsink was included for reference, it features a medium loud 70mm.
Arctic Silver kindly send us their “Lumière” thermal testing compound which has the same colour as Ceramique, but only a break in time of 30min!
Arctic Silver’s ArctiClean was used to clean off thermal paste of the CPU and heatsink between tests
Fans used
Most of these heatsink support 80mm fans, some support both 80 and 92mm, and one or two were able to fit a massive 120mm fan:
Coolink 80mm High/Low specs of this fan here. Very loud at maximum speed. Average noise production when running at low speed.
Papst 92mm Ultra High Multifan 3312 (pic) very high output fan, with large dead spot in the middle. Very loud.
Papst 92mm High/Low 3412 N/2GL rated at 36CFM at ~23dBA. It is virtually silent at low speed setting and remains silent even when running at full speed.
Papst 120mm High/Low 4412 F/2GLL (pic) rated at 18dBA at max speed it delivers ~40CFM. Was run at max speed ~1250rpm and at ~850rpm, more specs here. Very silent at lowest setting; audible at highest speed.
YS-Tech 120mm FD1212257B-2I (pic) , rated at 45dBA at max speed (~2600rpm), more specs here, was tested at maximum speed and is very loud.
With all the details explained it is time to meet our first contestant ->
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