X-bit labs

Introducing New Heat-Pipe Coolers: CoolJag Falcon 92-Al and Falcon 92-Cu Review

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 07/17/2007 | 10:08 AM ]

Today we are going to introduce to you for the first time new cooling solutions using heat-pipe design and originally shaped heatsinks from the Taiwanese CoolJag Company. Find out how efficient they prove in our extensive thermal and acoustic testing against the one of the best air-cooling solution of all times – Thermaltake Big Typhoon.

Table of contents:

• CoolJag Falcon 92-Al and Falcon 92-Cu
  
• Package and Accessories
  
• Design
  
• Installation Tips
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Thermal and Acoustic Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

New coolers take different paths to the market. Well-known companies like Zalman or Scythe announce their new products by sending out press releases a few months before the official launch. Such coolers become the subject of forum discussions right after the publication of product announcements together with photos and specs.

Companies of lesser renown offer their coolers for tests somewhat gingerly, laying no claim to the winner’s laurels. Two coolers from the yet-obscure CoolJag brand are going to be examined and tested in this review.

The Taiwan-based CoolJag began its market activities in 1986. The company’s not-yet-extensive product range includes coolers for servers as well as for home PCs. CoolJag develops cooling systems for server platforms with both Intel and AMD processors. Also present among CoolJag products are chipset coolers, fans, heatsinks and thermal interfaces.

I found two new coolers with heat pipe technology to be the most interesting offer of the brand. They are called Falcon 92-Al and Falcon 92-Cu.

CoolJag Falcon 92-Al and Falcon 92-Cu

Package and Accessories

The coolers come in same-size boxes with plastic handles.

A tight plastic jacket envelops the cooler inside each box. The cutouts in the cardboard give you a glimpse of the cooler. The package with the all-copper model has orange captions while the aluminum model has a silvery color of the text, which makes it easy to distinguish between the two. Besides detailed specifications and other, less useful, information, there is a very ambitious claim printed on the boxes that these coolers are simply the best on the market. Well, I’ve learned to regard such claims skeptically, having tested a number of various coolers already. I’ll just check out this claim in due time.

There is a flat box with accessories at the bottom of each package:

It contains the following components:

• Back-plate for LGA775 mainboards
• Two removable fasteners to install the cooler on platforms with K8 CPUs
• Four screws to fasten the back-plate
• Four screws to fasten the cooler
• Tube with Shinetsu 7762 thermal grease
• Installation guide

Don’t be surprised at finding no LGA775 fastener here because it is already secured on the cooler by default. Shinetsu 7762 thermal grease has been tested in our lab earlier. I mean we tried to test it. It hasn’t changed since our unsuccessful experience with it: it is still a thick hard-to-apply gray-colored substance with next-to-zero efficiency. After a couple of attempts to use it and seeing the CPU temperature fluctuate wildly, I gave up the included thermal grease. Perhaps it has to be applied in some particular way? Well, I didn’t find special instructions about the thermal grease in the user manual, so I suppose it is meant to be used like any other grease.

But enough of sad news, let’s now take a look at the Falcon 92-Al and Falcon 92-Cu coolers from CoolJag.