Introduction

Following up on our P4 Roundup we have a few heatsinks designed especially for the A64 platform; some of the HSF combo's previously tested could be mounted on A64 and P4, and with the help of a custom bracket almost any P4 heatsinks which uses the Intel retention bracket can be installed on A64.

This will be a to the point review, each heatsink will be evaluated on easiness of use and installation, compatibility and of course its performance will be thoroughly tested.

This review is split into 2 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 we’ve combined all results in 2 graphs sorted by cooling performance and noise/performance ratio.

Previously tested but included for reference (links lead to detailed overview of these heatsinks done in previous reviews):

Coolermaster Hyper6

Coolermaster Hyper48

Thermalright XP-120

Thermalright XP-90

Zalman CNPS7000CU

Zalman CNPS7700CU

Stock A64 Cooler

New contenders:

Scythe SCNJ-1000 Ninja

Scythe SHOGUN Heatlane

Titan Vanessa-L

Titan Vanessa-S

ThermalTake Sonic Tower

TTIC NPH K8-1

Arctic Cooling Freezer64

Scythe Kamaboko

Scythe KamabokoZ

Thermalright XP-90C

So let’s get on with the show

Test setup


Test Setup

JMke's Test Setup
CPU	A64 3200+ @ 2200Mhz default vcore
Mainboard	DFI NF3 Lanparty
Memory	1 * 256Mb PC3700 OCZ
Other	ATI R9000 Passive Cooling Silverstone 300W Passive Cooled PSU Maxtor 120GB IDE HDD

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 we got questionable results the test was restarted.

Setup was installed in a case less environment

Noise level of each fan was recorded with SmartSensor SL4001A, the sensor was placed ~40cm away from the HSF. The lowest dBA reading in the test room was 36 dBA. There were a couple of heatsink and fan combo's which produced <36dba readings, they were placed in a quiet room (~30dba) to obtain below 36dba readings.

System was stressed by running K7 CPU Burn for 30min (after Thermal Compound’s burn-in); this application pushes the temperature higher then any other application or game we’ve yet encountered. Speedfan was used to log maximum obtained temperatures.

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

Aerocool Extreme 80mm : 34CFM

Vantec Tornado 80mm TD8038H: 84.1CFM

Panaflo 92mm FBA09A12H: 56.8CFM

Papst 92mm 3412 N/2GL: 36CFM

Vantec Tornado 92mm: 119CFM

Papst 120mm 4412 F/2GLL: 40CFM

Titan 120mm (included with Siberia): 115CFM

With all the details explained it is time to meet our first new contestant ->