Gadzooks! I think it's time to turn in my Computer Geek membership card. "Cooler" is the only word in that sentence that I can even come close to understanding.......

Uhhh... really interesting heatsink

That's an amazing performance, but comes with an equally amazing pricetag. You can buy a pretty good entry-level processor for just what this heatsink costs, even without a fan! There's got to be a point for most people where getting 90% of the performance for 50% of the money is the better way to go, but then again, since it's aimed at Nehalem buyers, I guess the pricing makes sense to a degree.

Great article. It's good to know the best even if I would probably never buy it.

A little off topic, but how are aluminum fins attached to copper heatpipes on this heatsink and similar ones. Is it a press fit?

For that kind of dough you'd think they could make the caps on top of the heatpipes match./


~2 degrees less @ 11dBa for twice the price?
Pass.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article916-page3.html

Did you use enough thermal paste?

Pointless. Absolute silence isn't needed for high performance computing or the sorts of servers that require Nehalem.

You say that - do you have a high performance PC?

I know I know you can't have your cake and eat it too - but you can. My box isn't silent, but it's nowhere near as loud as you seem to infer power builders deserve.

As for builds that require Nehalem, I agree fully. The PC just doesn't benefit enough from i7 to justify the price for everything besides servers and SUPER-resolution performance gaming. My Q6600 doesn't have any trouble with 1920x1200. The benches I've seen show i7 taking off in the 2500+ range of resolution.

Will this beast fit in the Antec Solo??

Which fan would be best suited to this heatsink?

This cooler ships with no fan. What is the performance difference without the fan? I.E. How much of difference does the fan make?

Valid questions if it was a 1ghz single core from 1999...

its an 4x2 core chip!!

actually this would appear to show promise as a passive HS for non-i7 applications. If they can just price it lower then the TRUE, maybe in Xig territory, they could have a sleeper hit on their hands.

We have a test here between some coolers. Not fanless, but from low RPM to high RPM.
Open stand, 21°C room temperature.

No, no it's not. It's one quad core chip.

Think he's referring to hyper threading there, though it wouldn't add to the heat.

The amount of heat put out by the I7 and Core2 chips is below that of the P4EE. I'm not sure on the numbers but it seems to me a cooler like this should be able to handle the heat without a fan, albeit with slightly elevated temps.

The test here shows the temp at 39 degrees. That leave plenty of room for no fan.



Odd that your test show very different temps than here.

He's still entirely wrong. It's a single quad-core die, not a pair of dual-core dies like the Core 2 Quads, and certainly not four of them.

Of course, my friend has a Quad @3.3GHz not a Presler.
I don't want to compare with SPCR testing only with my friend's testing. All those heatsinks were tested in one session.
Anyway Megahalem is the first heatsink better than TRUE. He is surpassed by TRUE copper but only at very high RPM's.
Bottom line a very good heatsink but not very cheap.

That makes sense. Why I didn't notice that, I don't know.

Hi,

The key things with this heatsink seem to be the solder at all the thermal transfer points, in the base especially, and between the heatpipes and the fins -- which is what the split fins make easier.

And maybe the shallow 'V' recess between the fan and the fins is helpful for getting good air flow through the relatively tightly spaced fins? This heatsink has almost identical spacing to the Xigmatek, right?

The base mounting looks to be top notch! Scythe (especially) and Thermalright, et al should take note!

[Edit: do you have a Xigmatek Thor's Hammer in the lab for testing, yet?]

What about this is pointless exactly?
I plan on getting a i7 in a month or so, and I'd like the quietest machine possible. A little underclocking and a crazy heatsink like this would give me plenty of room to silence my new machine. I live in the city and I could arguably get away with fans on high if I wanted to, but silencing my computer is a hobby for me.
Frankly, I'm really excited to see a new round of heatsinks coming out for Nehalem, since it's really hard to find what comes with brackets that fit the new, larger socket.
More reviews like this, please. And thanks.

Its a nice heatsink, but as others have said, its a bit too expensive.

Plus theres another negative you need to add to it. Its not sold at newegg. I'm sure this matters less to people on the other side of the pond, but over here, if its not at newegg it basically doesnt exist.

As for i7 costing too much, thats not really the case anymore. Its only around $200 more for the whole system in total from a comparably spec'd C2Q system.

But back to the topic at hand. I think until its available at newegg, and for a bit less cash, i'll be sticking with xigmatek.

It often makes a slight difference with heatpipe coolers whether the motherboard is vertical or horizontal. Perhaps that's what comes into play here?

Cheers
Olle

Absolutely. I mean by HPC servers designed for large-scale calculations or data-processing, etc.
I have a high-performance pc which I even use for scientific computing but it isn't an HPC .

The intersection between users that benefit from a high-power i7 and users that benefit from silence is very small. There will be exceptions; for example if you are using it to replace a cluster in your bedroom or if you need to do heavy computation from your office and don't have access rights to a supercomputer.

Here the TRUE is better than the Megahalems: http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.h ... VzaWFzdA==

(overclocked Core i7 920)

1.3 degrees better with 300 more rpms.
If there's enough folks that feel the need to spend double on cars that can go 185mph instead of just 170 shopping for heatsinks, it will sell OK.

Sample variation?

The TRUE? The more appropiate comparison should be to an IFX-14 or Ninja Cu. I am guessing those aren't Nehalem compatible.

I once splurged on a ~$95 Swiftech MC462A for the fastest CPU then available (a ~$120 Athlon 1400), but I am very happy that I can now buy a very nice heatsinks for $20 to $30 (even my three-year-old $20 Coolink BAT1VS is pretty decent.) I also haven't lapped a heatsink base in years, but increasing the mounting pressure always makes a significant difference. The mounting system on this heatsink does look pretty nice--much better than my old Swiftech.

Maybe... but in that test, the TRUE (and not the IFX-14 or others) is better than the Megahalems and it is the only Megahalems VS TRUE test I've found which is based on a Core i7 CPU.