SPCR

PartEleven wrote:I noticed a few errors. The table for comparing the Katana 3 to the "best of the best" doesn't actually have a line for the Katana 3. I don't know if this was intentional, but it makes it difficult to compare if you have to switch between that chart and the testing results above.

Otherwise, great review! I'm glad SPCR hasn't got caught on the high-end train and hasn't forgotten about budget solutions like these.

The reason I question the supposed merits of Scythe's Fast-Phase Structure is that heatpipes are phase change devices that work best with high temperature differentials between the evaporator end and the condensor end. The hotter one end gets, the faster the internal liquid boils and turns to vapor, moving to the condenser end. Conversely, the cooler the other end gets, the faster the vapor turns back to liquid and moves down to the evaporator end. The extruded aluminum piece (FPS) is on the hot or evaporator end. Rather than being transferred up into the liquid of the heatpipes, some of the heat will go up to the FPS and be dissipated by airflow. This would reduce the total amount of heat going into the heatpipes, and it would have the effect of slowing down rather than speeding up the phase change process in the heatpipes. Have I missed something? Or has Scythe's marketingspeak gone one step too far?

Vibrator wrote:Well they wouldn't add extra metal for no reason would they?

I'm thinking the heatpipes still work well because the heat has to hit the heatpipes first before the small heatsink.

I think the small heatsink is meant to add surface area.

article wrote:Having said all that, if the mass of the FPS was converted into more fins on the main tower stack, the difference in CPU cooling would probably be marginal. The improvement in phase change speed would be offset by the absence of cooling via the extruded aluminum piece. It's just that Fast-Phase does not accurately describe the role of the secondary aluminum piece.

Even though the AMD clip doesn't allow for heatsink or fan rotation, on most AMD boards, the fan will end up blowing in the right direction, toward the back case exhaust fan.