Great to see some packaging for a PC component with very little plastic! Shame the product itself is just a bit "meh". Still, for £10-£11 I guess it is good value, and with a spare 120mm fan zip tied to it, it could deliver good results.

Would be interesting to see how it compares to other HS in the same price range using the same size fan, it looks very good for people who don't want alot of hassle installing a new heatsink, don't want to spend alot of money, and aren't going to be overclocking anything. That probably makes up quite a big market.

Mike,

Does the plastic shroud seem like it can be removed easily? The bracket seems to sit in notches that might work for fan clips. Would the fin spacing be enough to maybe use EARS instead to mount a fan?

As mentioned, it's 4 clips in notches around the fin edges, much like the grooves for fan wire clips in Thermaltake & Scythe models. Very easy to remove, w/ a flat blade screwdriver. Not sure what you mean by EARS, but just a bit of thin solid wire through/around the fins would work fine to attach a different or bigger fan.

Uh, pushpins? 92mm fan? Cookie cutter design? No thanks.

Something I didn't get from the article: What exactly is it about this product that would have an appeal for the spcr audience? I'm not trying to imply that the review was worthless, but I do think other products, even a breakdown of Intel Stock cooler(s), would be more interesting for this particular niche.

Not everyone is a diehard about noise or wants to spend >$50 on a cooler. SPCR is read by a LOT of people, 80% of whom don't ever make a post in the forum. A $20 cooler that's way better than Intel's stock coolers is worth noticing. And if you read between the lines, you'll know that this thing has the potential to be a real coolnquiet performer. All it'll take is a very quiet 120mm fan and minimal modding skills. Even the pushpins don't need replacing. Never mind the generic design -- the execution is quite good.

That's something I hadn't thought of- from reading the posts here, I was under the impression that people weren't all that price sensitive. Sometime I forget my stats basics and the implications of self-selected samples.

This very true, but it would have been nice to see some direct comparisons to other similarly priced coolers from Arctic-Cooling and Scythe, that you have reviewed in the past. Even more interesting would have been a direct comparison to something that is slightly more expensive like an XP-90 or mini Ninja. Is the extra $15 worth it? I can maybe find this out myself, but it takes a lot clicking and scrolling. An extra few columns in your table with competing models (like you generally do for higher end HSF) would have been very nice.

In most SPCR heatsink comparisons, because one of the reference fans has been used, we can simply lay out a table showing the temperature rise for each voltage/speed of the reference fan for a number of different heatsinks. Here, this is not possible. Virtually no other heatsinks were tested in the last couple of years with our reference 80mm fan, which was used in the test. Trying to lay out a simple comparison for data for several different SPL points for each of several fans is almost impossible.

But I went back, hunted down some data, fiddled... and laid out a comparison with the stock cooler supplied with various HSF at ~22 dBA/1m. Last page. It's a rough comparison, but it shows that even with the stock fan, which is not great, it does quite well. Only the Minja clearly beats it.

I'd like to mention that people on Anandtech's forums have found this heatsink to be exactly the same as the Rosewill RCX-Z775-LX, $22 shipped @ Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835200035

Hello,

I wonder how an 80mm fan would work, if you sealed the gaps with some foil tape? It is also a prime candidate for using that 100mm Scythe fan that is so quiet.

[Edit: The Rosewill version appears to have a slightly different fan -- the sides of the frame have slots; kinda' like that Panasonic from a few years back...]

[Edit 2: I wish the Ninja Rev B had this tight a contact between the base and the heatpipes!]

I changed my Ninja rev B to a Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro which looks almost identical to this and lowered my idle and load temps by atleast 5 degrees Celsius.

With help from zip ties I continue to use the same 120mm fan that I used with the Ninja.

Thanks, Mike. Given how many "rank these HSF choices for me" type posts we see in the forums, I think this is exactly the sort of thing many people will find helpful.

Looks like it only has two heatpipes, vs. three for the Akasa. I'd think that would make a difference in cooling performance.

Hello Jesse,

That's just the angle of the photo -- it's the same heatsink, with a slightly different fan.