The kit's specific to the Intel mount unfortunately.

My take on this setup....the aluminum ribs between the heat-pipes at the base are there for a reason. They prevent the pipes from being crushed during the mounting procedures. Those heat-pipes are relatively fragile. I had to bend an 8mm pipe once before.....it can almost be crushed by finger pressure.

Looking at the base....the round heat-pipes are placed in the aluminum base. Then the setup is pressed relatively flat. After that, the base is machined slightly.....enough to attain the final base you see. The walls of heat-pipes are very thin.....not much metal can be removed by the machine process.

Without the aluminum base, you'd have thin-walled copper heat-pipes that would loose their flatness with the slightest pressure.

Remember the Scythe "Heatlane" technology......this used a wide, flat heat-pipe, rather than the usual round heat-pipes. This was a fragile device, that needed support metal on both sides to prevent crushing. And this is the weak point of the technology. The wide "pipe" never could make good contact with it's own heat-spreaders. (there was no good way to machine the "Heatlane" completely flat).

Anyway...

Performance speaks for itself, I'm getting one to replace my sh*tty Nexus SkiveTek PHT-7750

I disagree. First of all, there are heatpipes that have thicker walls than the ones you described.
You don't need the ribs to keep the pipes from damage, as long as you have the aluminium base touching the IHS closer to the edges where there's less heat dissipation.
Imagine just keeping the two ribs that are closest to the mounting holes in the pic I posted earlier.
This would make the HS less useable for CPU's without an IHS, of course.

The (inner) ribs are there to keep the pipes in place, with this construction they get support from three sides.
Without them you need to fixate the pipes to the base higher up.

If the pipes are empty then yes they would be pretty fragile.
I have always been under the assumption that heatpipes have some sort of liquid in them and that they are sealed at both ends. That gives the heatpipes some pretty good structural integrity due to the internal pressure and the fact that pressure isn't allowed to escape.
You try crushing a garden hose pipe when no water is in it, it is fairly easy, and then try doing it when the pipe has water in it and the water isn't allowed to flow, it will be rock hard.

But heatpipes are pretty much empty, they only hold a tiny amount of liquid (often water), and at pretty low pressure to allow the water to boil at ~0C instead of 100C @ normal pressure. If they'd be filled with a liquid pressure would get much higher as soon as some of it evaporated, which could break the pipe (water, for example, expands over 1500x when evaporating).

Greetings,



I'm agreeing with Carl on this. Without the aluminum ribs, when there is enough pressure to get good contact with the CPU, there is no way that a flattened, hollow, copper tube would NOT distort.

i dont see what all the fuss is about. the numbers speak for themselves.

Smaller than a thermalright
Lighter than a thermalight
Cheeper than a thermalright

All with the same perforamance, and slightly better at lower airflow?

The pushpins arnt going to go away until intel dictates it no matter how much we all hate them. Cant really blame the heatsink makers, they are afterall just following intel's specifications.

Its a slam dunk people. Go out and buy one and stop complaining.

They could at least offer the option of a backplate. Its not hard to take off the pushpins and put them back together, bundle in a backplate as well and everyone will be happy, and it'll only add a few dollars at most for them to do it.

Ditto -- the KingWin version is the best deal at NewEgg ($4.01 less shipped than the Xigmatek) -- it is $40 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835124019

While I really enjoy SPCR and the review made for a good read, I really wish MikeC wouldn't have published this review.

This is the heatsink I had targetted for my upcoming build. I'm still about 3 months out and now that SPCR and AnandTech and everyone else is starting to notice this HSF, I'm worried that I'm going to have troubles finding it in the near future. Being smaller, lighter, and cheaper than the TRUE, but from a (potentially?) smaller company, I hope they don't end up selling out at retailers like the TRUE is.

I'll be getting the TR bolt-through kit, though. I really hate pushpins. And I'm looking to replace the stock fan with a Scythe Kama PWM fan. I suppose in the end, its only going to be about $10-15 cheaper than the TRUE, but I really like not having to worry about stressing my board with the TRUE.

Just to clarify, I didn't mean that there should be no ribs at all, one on each side must be kept. I think that is what andyb meant as well.

It just wouldn't work with no ribs, like everybody else says.

I'm convinced that mounting pressure is just as significant as thermal resistance in evaluating heatsinks. It's not immediately obvious to me how this could be measured quantitatively in a method consistent with SPCR's ideology, but perhaps somebody smarter than me will figure it out.

This multi-brand "family" of heatsinks tops off with the iCEAGE Prima 120, which has four 8mm heatpipes, a noticeably improved surface quality, more fin area, and an impressively low thermal resistance of 0.09 C/W (half the listed resistance of the 120mm heatsink tested here). But if the mounting pressure isn't as good, then the overall performance could be worse.

What I'm saying is that it's pointless to debate the finer points of heatsink design unless we can eliminate the variable of mounting pressure. It's already the conventional wisdom of the SPCR community that the current versions of the Ninja are limited by insufficient mounting pressure. The sample tested in this review apparently had its push-pins configured for substantially more pressure, and the test results bear that out.

IMHO, SPCR should test all heatsinks with a spring-loaded bolt-through mount as well as the stock mounting system. This way we can ensure that the products are tested at a consistent mounting pressure and send a clear message to the manufacturers as to just how much performance they are leaving on the design bench by not shipping their heatsinks with the obviously superior bolt-through mount system.

Mike, if you really dislike the push-pin system, you have a pretty nice soapbox from which to spread the bolt-through gospel.

Could someone please explain to me just how more pressure between two 100% flat surfaces could improve thermal transfer? The idea behind thermal paste is to fill-in slight surface imperfections, removing the small air pockets. More pressure would flatten warped surfaces (supposedly), but that's about it. If the surfaces were completely flat against each other to begin with, neither TIM nor great pressure would be necessary.....IMHO.

You just answered your own question. Both surfaces are never "100% flat" whatever that means. Actually, that phrase is meaningless if we're talking scientifically. It's more accurate and realistic to say "flat enough" -- whatever that means.

In any case, it is my experience with many dozens of heatsinks tested that higher pressure usually leads to lower temperature. If it's not very tight, then simply pushing down firmly on the HS with a finger or two is enough to lower the CPU temp a couple degrees almost immediately. If it is very tight already, then added pressure makes no or little difference.

So it's a matter of lapping both surfaces, or machining the surfaces better, or designing a retention mechanism that holds the surfaces flatter against each other.....not particularly pressure.

Pressing down on a heatsink harder to get better thermal contact, simply proves the surfaces were not touching each other correctly, something that could be improved by other methods besides more pressure....which warps boards and breaks retention devices. IMHO

In pedestrian cooling systems, any TIM with any pressure will perform adequately.

However, at the high end, a top-quality TIM (eg, AS5 or any other silver-based TIM) must be extremely thin to achieve maximum performance.

Given this, there are two variables: flatness and pressure. Lapping improves flatness, but again for maximum performance, thinness is important.

Thus mounting pressure is important, even when both surfaces are very flat. In the case of LGA775 CPUs, there have been many reports that the IHS is not really flat unless subjected to at least 60lb of pressure (I have no idea whether this is true).

But what I do know is true is that with AS5, higher mounting pressure is always better, and when coupled with a high-performance heat sink such as the original Ninja, the resulting performance is outstanding.

Look at this: http://www.cooling-masters.com/news-741 ... oses-.html

Wow, that's quite an imprint.

I had a look at our 1263 sample. It has some slight marks but nothing like the above. Perhaps the example above is of sample that was handled roughly during installation? Or maybe just left on the CPU/mobo for a long time. That HS does seem to apply a fair bit of pressure. Mind you, just about every base develops some kind of blemish at the perimeter of the CPU heatspreader.

Yipes....that picture proves how easily those heat-pipes can be crushed. But I suspect that particular heat-sink sample was somehow manufactured out of square.....either that or the board retention device was faulty. Something to consider/check before installing one of these devices....

It could just be a horribly concave heat spreader.. I've had to lap so many C2D CPUs because of high temperatures at stock speeds.

It's an interesting conundrum, this heat pipe crushing issue. One could argue that "crushable" heatpipes, assuming that the overall structural integrety remains solid, maximizes contact area with the heat spreader on the CPU without the need for lapping either the heat sink or the processor.

Crush washers are commonly used in automotive bolt-seal applications, ironically usually copper, where the pressure on the washer between the bolt face and the block curshes the washer into an airtight seal at lower torque values. This is an alternative to a bolt face to block direct seal or forcing a seal through the threads themselves which nets a positive seal while reducing thread strain on the bolt and preventing over-torquing, bolt stretch, etc.

This "crush-factor" may actually be a significant contributor to the better than expected results of these heatsinks. I don't think it was an intended feature by the manufacturer.

[EDIT: Horrible sentence structure fixed]

I doubt it. While copper gaskets/washers have their uses (I used them with an ultra-high vacuum chamber in college) I would say that crushing a heatpipe from its designed specs would ever be "good" for it.

I'd much rather have the lap the IHS for good contact than have to distort the HS device to make it usable. Lapping an IHS makes it better regardless of the HSF used. Crushing a heatpipe essentially makes it "one and done".

Right, but with the compound Aluminum and Copper base in this HS lapping would be more difficult. Not impossible, but greater care needs to be taken because with the differing hardnesses of the two materials. Besides, it looks as though the heat pipes have already been machined, and with the "crushability" I don't think I'd want to take much more material off of it anyhow.

As for "one and done," with the exception of super-power users who have the time, money and inclination to repeatedly swap heatsinks to save yet one more degree C, I would say that most common-average users don't swap and sell heatsinks like Magic cards.

Hello,



I think you may be onto something with this. Obviously, whatever is happening at the interface between the CPU and the HS is working.

Another interesting thought occurs to me: if a typical CPU touches a little less than the width of 3 heatpipes, then with the iCEAGE Prima 120 HS, it will touch the center 2, and just touch about half of the outer 2 heatpipes (since the aluminum ribs are narrower):

(click on image for link to OEM)

What's really interesting about the 3R iCEAGE is it's 775 retention mechanism. They include a plastic bracket that attaches to the motherboard via the Intel holes, the heatsink is then attached to the bracket like an AMD-AM2.

BTW- I can't seem to find any US based vendors for the 3R Systems Iceage 120 and the US distributor link at Frostytech works but has nothing about this heatsink.

Hello,

Then that means it can only be mounted in two positions (180 degrees apart); whereas the KingWin/Xigmatek can be mounted in four positions (90 degrees apart).

Fortunately it can be rotated in 90 degree increments. Remember that the 775 holes are square to each other so it's simply a matter of rotating the base 90 degrees when mounting to the board.

Check out the review at FrostyTech. The last picture on the first page shows the mounting for the 775.

are they available in canada?

It occurred to me the other day that there is another variable we haven't been discussing in this pressure vs performance debate: the internal TIM.

LGA775 CPUs have a TIM between the CPU die and the IHS (inside the CPU case). Maybe pressing harder on the top of the IHS improves the performance of this TIM.

Unfortunately for us in forum-land, only Intel engineers could possibly answer this question, and they aren't likely to...