X-bit labs

Roundup: Seven High-Performance Coolers for AMD and Intel Processors (page 4)

Category: Coolers

by Doors4ever

[ 04/26/2006 | 09:44 PM ]

Two heat pipes take heat off the copper base:

The base is superbly polished:

The cooler comes with an LGA755 fastener already attached so you only have to screw it to the back-plate, but you also get everything necessary to use the cooler with an AMD K8 processor (another back-plate and fastener).

The Spire VertiCool II kept our Intel Pentium 4 521 processor running until a FSB frequency of 280MHz. The resulting CPU frequency was 3.93MHz. The CPU temperature was fluctuating from 67.5 to 70°C which is a very good result; the fan speed was about 2200rpm.

I must confess I had troubles trying to switch to another platform. It should have been easy as you are only supposed to replace the fastener by undoing one small screw.

I removed the LGA775 fastener all right, but had a hard time trying to install the other one. The screw-hole is right in the middle, making you reach for it with your screwdriver from a side, and the screw would go in at a wrong angle and get stuck. I think it would be easier for the user to deal with two screws.

As soon as I overcame that difficulty, there arose another one:

As you see, the fan is right above the screw head and you have to remove the fan to tighten the screw. So, I eventually installed the Spire VertiCool II on an AMD processor, but that was a real trouble indeed.

The Spire VertiCool II did well on our AMD Athlon X2 64 3800+, too. It allowed me to overclock the CPU to 2.7GHz at 1.4V voltage. The CPU temperature was fluctuating within a range of 61-63°C.