|
Posted
on October 19, 2001 by Per
Hansson
Alpha's
PAL8045
The
Alpha brand of heatsinks are known for their quality, if you
have a good eye you will notice that the copper inlay in the
heatsink hasn’t been pressed in, somehow they have melted
it into there. Alpha will not comment on how they do this
but I can safely assure you that it’s the absolutely best
method available… This HSF uses four holes around the
socket on the mainboard, this is great because it makes sure
that the HSF sits very secure and can’t fall off and
destroy things; it also delivers a good pressure level
against the CPU core.
But as always there is
a downside and here it’s that you will need to remove you
mainboard from the case when you install the HSF, if you
don’t have a hole in the plate that your mainboard rests
against…
Performance
Alpha recommends that
you place the fan so that it sucks the air, rather than
blow, so that is what I did.
With the high-pitched
80mm Delta fan it delivers temperatures that almost makes my
water-cooling rig look bad, and with the quiet Sunon fan it
even manages to make me
satisfied about the noise level!
If
you are a hardcore overclocker, you will want to put the
Delta fan on and get an extremely efficient cooling setup.
On the other side if you want to go the “quiet” (pun
intended) way you can choose a lower specked fan and you
will still get better cooling results at a lower noise level
compared to the 60mm coolers in this roundup, the reason for
this is that the heatsink uses 80mm fans which produce less
noise due to their bigger blades, compared to a smaller fan
which would require a higher RPM to deliver the same amount
of air… The price, while maybe not looking cheap still is
a bargain at $40 without a fan, there is a lot of work that
has gone into this heatsink, and it will offer you good
cooling for a long time, you just can’t go wrong by buying
this HSF…
Thermalright
SK6
The SK6 uses a standard clip, which makes use of two of the total six cleats on the CPU socket. While I can't understand why any manufacturer makes heatsinks that don't use all six cleats on the CPU socket this particular one isn't that bad - Since it's heaviest point is the bottom plate which is right next to the CPU, which thus isn’t causing much "over-hang", but I still don't like that heatsink manufacturers takes this approach, the cleats have been there since socket 5 - It's just a matter of using them...
If you want to see what happens if one of the cleats on the socket do break of Tom’s Hardware has "simulated" it
here. The installation of the heatsink is fairly easy, just "clip the clip on". A flat-headed screwdriver is required though.
Performance
The performance of the SK6 proved to be quite incredible, while neither the size nor weight (330g) did expel the performance certainly did: out of all 60mm heatsinks tested this one turned out to be the best!
I also tested the heatsink with lower spec fans, and while of course performance is decreased so is noise, in my opinion the YS-Tech is the loudest fan you will want to have in your computer; The Delta is simply too much of the good…
Only the Alpha 8045 could outperform this HSF. But if your mainboard doesn't have the 4 holes required by that heatsink, or you have a cramped case this is your best bet, its price is also quite good; around $30 without fan.
|
