X-bit labs

Little Coolers for a Big Processor: AURAS TwinW, APACK ZEROtherm CF900 and Scythe Shuriken (page 5)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 05/07/2008 | 08:21 PM ]

Design and Functionality

The cooler is of pretty simple design:

Four copper heatpipes, each 6mm in diameter, come from the copper base. They carry copper heatsink plates with 1.5~2mm gaps between them. The whole thing is cooled with a 95x25mm fan sitting on an aluminum retention bracket:

The cooler measures 100 x 94 x 77mm and weighs 562g. A few additional photos below will give a better idea of what it actually looks like:

Take a look at the cable that goes from the fan into the heatsink (upper left photo). It is a fan thermal diode, which is installed not at the cooler base, but closer to the lower part of the heatsink array, unfortunately. So, we assume that the fan will react a little later to the actual changes in the processor temperature. We are going to check it out during our test session. Here I would like to add that the fan rotation speed is claimed to be 800-2300RPM, according to the specifications. At this speed it officially generates from 18 to 27dBA of noise.

The heatpipes sit in special grooves in the cooler base and are soldered to it at the contact spots. The base is very even and is pretty nicely finished, although you can still see the machine traces on its surface: