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AVC 3x P4 Heatsink Roundup |
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Written by Alexandru Spataru
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Sunday, 01 July 2007 |
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Page 4 of 5
This new fan, model F7015B12UY, is made by AVC, measures 70x70x15 mm and it is rated 4400RPM and 39.97 CFM. It's nice that AVC equipped this cooler with a more powerful fan, but the bad part is that the noise level is quite high. Too bad AVC decided to use their own fans on their coolers, because the YS Tech TMD would have been a much better choice. It has higher CFM at a lower noise level. So it's not the fan that makes this cooler special, but the heatsink itself. It measures 83x70x35.15mm and here's what AVC says about it:
- An optima-use of air flow heat exchanger shape.
- High conducting of copper tube-made, efficiently spreading heat-flux.
- An uniform heat conducting and convection.
Oh, right, and the pictures of it, of course:
As you can see, this is not the classic rectangular heatsink with fins on the upper side, but a more sophisticated model. It resembles the original ThermoEngine cooler, but with a copper core. The core is inserted in the heatsink, or maybe the aluminum part is just built around this core. The fins are also quite funky; they're curved and look almost like a spiral. These fins have a huge surface, and the fact that they're curved is even better for heat dissipation. However, due to the rounded shape of the heatsink, the fan is impossible to attach, so AVC found an original way to keep the fan on top of the heatsink. The clips used to secure the cooler in place above the CPU also hold the fan.
In fact, the heatsink and the fan, which as I said is attached to the clips, do not make a hole; they're separate. You first install the heatsink on top of the CPU, then you secure it in place with the clips and fan. Pretty neat, huh? And here are the clips:
So this is what holds the fan on the heatsink. In order to determine how good these coolers are, I had to do some testing. And here's the system I used:
- Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz
- EPoX 4G4A+ motherboard
- 512MB RAM working at DDR266 CAS 2.0-5-2-2
- 40 GB Maxtor D740X HDD
- GeForce4 Ti4600 128MB video card
- Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Sound card
- Windows XP Professional SP1
- Enlight EN-7233B case with one 80mm intake fan and one 80mm exhaust fan, both rated 34CFM
A fresh thin layer of AS3 was applied for each cooler, so that takes care of the thermal interface. Intel's Chipset driver 4.20 was installed, as well as Intel Application Accelerator 2.3. For the video card drivers I used Detonator 42.01 and DirectX9, so everything was running just fine. To measure the CPU temperature and case temperature, I used MotherBoard Monitor version 5.2.0.0, which has full support for Pentium 4's in-core diode. I measured the full load temp after half an hour of CPU Stability Test, but I also measured the temperature after running different applications, games included.
The idle temperature was measured with MBM after one hour of doing absolutely nothing, I just left the computer for one hour, no applications running, just the desktop. The ambient temperature was about 27C, at least that is what the room thermometer showed, but to make sure, I used two thermal probes, one inside the case and one outside the case, to measure case temperature and the ambient temperature.
For comparison purposes, I used the stock cooler which comes with the retail version of the Pentium 4. It's the model with the 70x70x15mm fan that's bundled with the P4 2.4GHz and above. Sorry I have no pictures of it, but if you're using a Pentium 4 CPU you must know what this cooler looks like, a medium aluminum heatsink with the Intel (actually it's Sanyo Denki) fan on top. The fan is very quiet and not very powerful, but does a very good job.
The stock Intel cooler had been lapped on the base for better heat transfer. The original TIM pre-applied by Intel was not exactly good, so I lapped the entire base of the cooler with 600 grit sand paper. The process had some very good results, and dropped the CPU temp by 2-3 degrees Celsius. So this is not your average stock cooler. And by the way, the AVC coolers were not at all lapped. As I said, I also tested the temperatures after gaming and usual Internet browsing. It was actually a torment for me playing all those games :-) but I did it none the less.
I played about one hour or more of Jedi Knight 2 online. Measured the temperature for each cooler, then I started playing UT2003 for another hour or so, and measured the CPU temperature once again. As for the browsing part, well, I just did what I usually do when I have free time, browse the net for interesting stuff, check my mail, and of course, visit Mikhailtech, post on the MKT forums and all that. This does not usually need much CPU power, so don't expect temperatures to be very high, just barely above idle. Anyway, here are the results I got:
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Last Updated ( Monday, 09 July 2007 )
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