Heatsinks and coolers form an integral part of a stable and reliable PC. There should always be extensive consideration given to the choice of the CPU cooler, especially when it comes to self-built PCs. Users of Intel Pentium 4 processors are largely spared from buying third-party cooling solutions simply because the boxed processor is usually shipped with a fairly efficient CPU cooler. On the other hand, Athlon XP users often need to look for better cooling solutions because CPU coolers shipped together with AMD boxed processors are normally sub-standard and do not work well in certain setups. In addition, Athlon XP processors are normally offered in loose tray versions that does not come with a cooler.
The market today is quite saturated with various types of coolers. Socket-A (or 462) coolers are available in all shapes, sizes and materials. Overclockers would tend to go for coolers made of copper due to its better heat conductivity properties. However, copper heatsinks are normally more heavy than its aluminium counterparts and they are usually less popular due to its heftier price tag. In addition to that, copper heatsinks are usually more difficult to fabricate and because of that, manufacturers have used various methods to form the fins on the heatsink. The easier method would be the glueing method where copper fins are glued to a thick copper base using conductive glue. The glueing method is usually the less effective solution because of the poor heat conducitive glue interface between the base and fins.
Read the review at HardwareZone.com
Jul 29, 2003, 08:56 PM
