Since the last report of ours on the cooling solutions for AMD CPUs, the processors have grown up quite significantly and the cooler manufacturers have launched a lot of new more efficient models. In the current review we will consider 18 different cooling solutions and will see how efficient they are with AMD Athlon 1GHz and 1.4GHz processors.

At present copper is one of the most frequently used materials for coolers, because it features twice as high heat conductance as aluminum, for instance. So, we decided that it could be pretty interesting to compare the aluminum and copper models in one review to single out the highs and lows of both. Moreover, this massive testing may help you select a cooler for your needs.

Well, let's get started! :-)

Testing Participants

In order not to confuse you, we decided to introduce our testing participants in alphabetical order. Please, meet:

Cooler Master CB5-5G12

This cooler from Cooler Master is very small, it is not bigger than the Socket A. despite the relatively small dimensions, it is quite an interesting solution because its heatsink is made of copper. The soft and thin copper ribs are soldered to a thick copper foot. In fact, it is quite hard to fasten a fan to soft ribs like that that is why there is a special aluminum housing covering the soft "insights" of the cooler.

Although this miniature cooler failed to stand the competition with monster-like "Dragons", we liked it very much for perfectly finished surfaces and easy installation. Its 40mm fan doesn't produce too much noise and whistling, however, you can still feel some vibration and hear low-frequency buzzing because of the ill-balanced fan impeller.

Cooler Master CH5-5K12

We haven't ever seen any alternative coolers like that :-) The main idea of this solution implies that the heat from the cooler foot is dissipated via the U-tubes with some liquid substance inside. There are a lot of aluminum plates soldered to the tubes. These plates get heated and are cooled down by the fan.

When we tried this cooler in practice, it worked: as soon as we booted the test system, the tubes ends got warm, while the plates heated considerably slower. However, unfortunately, this cooler is also quite small (it is not bigger than Socket A) and features a very weak 40mm fan, though it is relatively quiet. So, the brilliant idea got totally ruined by unsuccessful implementation.

This cooler is the lightest of all products tested this time. It can be installed very easily and quickly. However, we have to say that these are its only advantages. Besides, the great idea, of course :-)

Cooler Master DP5-5G12B

This is one more small cooler from Cooler Master. There is nothing excessive in it: a one-piece aluminum heatsink, a fan and that's it. It differs from the DP5-5G11B, which we haven't included in our testing this time, only by the fastening clip: the previous model also had a special "ear" to be fastened to the PCB with a screwdriver.

Actually, we found out that AMD recommends this cooler for its Athlon processors with the working frequency of up to 1.1GHz. We don't know what you think about it, but it seemed quite alleged to us even despite AMD's recommendations. It is quite small and has an only 40mm fan, which is too modest for today, we believe.

However, there is one thing that we really liked: the cooler footing is covered with a layer of thermoplastic material with good heat conductance, which softens when the processor die heats up. This feature helps prevent the CPU edges from coming off.

When the cooler was installed and the processor die got quite warm, the surface imperfections of the heatsink footing were all smoothed with this paste, which also spread to the sides of the footing from the center thus providing excellent contact between the two surfaces. On the other hand, if you have to remove the cooler from the CPU and then to reinstall it anew, then the thermoplastic paste may not spread evenly enough to provide the contact as good as it used to be at first. So, in this case you may have to clean it off and to use common thermal paste instead.

When we tested this cooler and the others, we didn't clean off the thermoplastic paste. In order to make sure that it spread evenly, we let the system heat well and then, after it cooled down completely, we ran all the tests.

The described cooler produced as much noise as the little ones mentioned above. And as for the cooling efficiency, we will talk about it later on.

Cooler Master DP5-6G11

The cooler on the photo looks quite impressive, but it uses the same heatsink as the previous model. It is equipped with a low-profile 50mm fan, which provides the required airflow not due to high rotation speed as many 50mm fans do, but due to a greater number of fan blades. That is why it is as quiet as the previously described models.

The cooler fastening clip has a special "ear" to be screwed to the PCB. On the one hand, it is good, because it guarantees that the cooler will be pressed tight enough and that it can be easily removed if necessary. But on the other hand, it may turn out quite difficult to install in some PC cases, where there is not enough room to work with the screwdriver. To tell the truth, we wouldn't have discovered this drawback, if we hadn't faced exactly this problem :-)

The cooler footing is also covered with some thermoplastic paste, which makes it a safe solution for the CPU.

Cooler Master DP5-6I11A

Yeah, finally! This cooler looks very impressive.

Equipped with the same 50mm fan as the previous model, it is much higher than the latter and hence is expected to ensure more efficient die cooling. Only the heatsink lets us distinguish between DP5-6I11A and the previous, DP5-6G11, model. All other features are absolutely identical: the same clip with an "ear", the same layer of thermoplastic paste… It also produced very little noise and can be installed just the same way.

So, it will be definitely very interesting to find out what the simple increase in the heatsink mass and surface size is worth.

Cooler Master EP5-6I11

This cooler is a continuation of the already mentioned family. All we could say about it is a larger heatsink and that's it. In this respect, there may arise some problems when installing this cooler onto certain mainboards. However, this is very unlikely to happen, because it is bigger than the processor socket only on those sides, where the mainboard has no electronic components.

It is not a noisy solution, proves easy to install (if your case allows you to reach the cooler with a screwdriver), is tightly pressed to the processor top. So, now we have only to compare its efficiency with that of other coolers.

Elan Vital FSCUG9C-6FC

We believe that Elan Vital designed a very interesting cooling solution. Its construction is quite simple: copper footing with aluminum ribs, all placed into a special housing. We would like to draw your attention to the footing shape: the lugs on the footing prevent the cooler from bending sideward during installation and protect the processor die edges against coming off:

But the major peculiarity is not the cooler construction, but a small black box with the fan control unit. This unit regulates the fan power supply depending on the temperature shown by the thermal diode integrated into the heatsink footing and hence located right above the CPU die. This makes the quiet 50mm multi-blade fan slow down when the CPU is idling and speed up to the nominal rotation speed when the workload increases and the processor heats up.

The only drawback we noticed by this cooler was the fastening mechanism, which includes the regular clip but doesn't have the "ear" for the screwdriver. Therefore, the finger slides off the clip very often, as you need to press pretty hard to fasten the cooler properly.

Titan TTC-MT2AB

This cooler from Titan has already been mentioned on our site. In fact, it is none other but a very violently and cynically cut aluminum cube equipped with two fans cooling it from two different sides. This increases the cooler reliability, because in case one fan stops or gets broken, the remaining fan will be able to prolong the processor's life a bit.

This cooler is pressed very tightly to the Athlon core that is why it really makes sense to fasten it to three hooks of the processor socket instead of one:

When the cooler was working, we could hear some whistling sound produced by the airflow and a slight buzzing, because one of the fans wasn't properly balanced.

ND3

This cooler used to offer the users beautiful price-to-performance ratio. However, now that the processors dissipate more and more heat, the price-to-performance ratio is not so important: it is the cooling efficiency that matters in the first place. So, this veteran had to prove first of all that it could work efficiently with the new processors, and only then to match its price against that of the other solutions. :-)

We will see later on what came out of that. And in the meanwhile we would like to mention two drawbacks, which we discovered: very loud low-frequency buzzing because of the ill-balanced impeller and not very well finished footing surface.

SUMA CoolMania

Well, the cooler looks really beautiful - that is the first impression. And the second impression appeared not that positive.

For instance, we were shocked by the horrible vibrations of the powerful 50mm fan. When we ran our tests, it seemed to us that the PC case would start crawling along the table if we didn't hold it with our hands, so strong the vibrations were.

The second and the last drawback discovered, is the huge heatsink, which can prevent you from installing this cooler onto certain mainboards.

Thermaltake Dragon Orb 1, 4900/7000rpm

New Dragon Orb coolers from Thermaltake differ from the predecessors by the new more powerful fans, which didn't fit into the cooler and had to be installed above the heatsink ribs.

There are two types of these coolers: with the 4,900rpm fan rotation speed and with 7,000rpm.

In order to send the airflow appropriately and to prevent the PC insights and your fingers from getting ground by the fans, there is a special aluminum housing covering the impeller.

The heatsink footing pressed to the cylindrical aluminum heart has now become thicker and bigger. The blue ribs of the heatsink are raised a bit above the footing, probably to make the installation easier. However, we have to admit that it didn't help us at all, because despite this modification the cooler turned out pressed to high capacitors around Socket A of ABIT KT7E mainboard, we ran our tests on.

As a result of all the mentioned modifications, the cooler appeared quite heavy, so it is not for nothing that the developer suggests fastening it to the three hooks of the processor socket on each side:

The cooler is pressed very tightly to the processor die, which is good, and is very easy to install with the help of a screwdriver and your own hands, of course. In other words, Thermaltake did take really good care of its new Dragons having made sure that they will fit well onto the CPUs, will stand the hurts of life and users, and arouse no installation problems.

However, in spite of all these advantages, Dragon Orb coolers are not absolutely impeccable. They feature one evident and one non-evident drawback. The first drawback is very high noise level, even though they are very well-balanced and hardly produce any vibrations. And the most exciting thing about it is the fact that the whistling sound made by the airflow on the cooler with 4,900rpm and on the model with 7,000rpm differs not in the volume but in the tone! That is why choosing a cooler with a slower fan hoping to get a quieter solution will make no sense.

The second drawback is the height of the cooler. In some PC cases, there is simply not enough room above the CPU for a cooler high like that.

Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3, 4900/7000rpm

These coolers are also available in two modifications: with 4,900rpm fan rotation speed and 7,000rpm fan rotation speed.

As for their construction and exterior, they are just the same as Thermaltake Dragon Orb 1 described above.

However, like Thermaltake Mini Copper Orb solution, their cylindrical heart is made of copper, which is an indisputable advantage, of course.

Unfortunately, the copper footing surface of these coolers, especially of the one with 7,000rpm fan, is pretty badly finished, which will undoubtedly tell on their efficiency.

Thermaltake Mini Copper Orb

This cooler looks very much like Golden Orb and Chrome Orb from Thermaltake, but unlike them it is equipped with a faster rotating fan and features cylindrical copper heart:

The cooler installs very easily, gets very tightly pressed to the processor die and its copper footing is very well finished. Its universal dimensions make the cooler fit for any mainboard.

The only disadvantage discovered is the improper fan balancing: for every 1-2 normally working Mini Copper Orb coolers producing only some kind of whistling sound, there turns out one cooler roaring wildly because of the ill-balanced fan.

By the way, we have equipped one of our PCs built on AMD Duron 650MHz CPU with a cooler like that, because we liked its looks very much. However, we were unlucky to get a "noisy" piece. That is why we had to equip it with slower rotating fan from Thermaltake Golden Orb in order to eliminate the noise and vibrations. This way the problem was solved.

Thermaltake Super Orb

This cooler is made of aluminum only, features longer heatsink ribs and is equipped with two fans to provide proper cooling of the entire heatsink: one of the fans is installed as usual, while the second fan is fastened at the top of the heatsink and blows the air to the upper part of the heatsink. To tell the truth, we don't quite understand what's the purpose of this solution, because we don't think it makes real sense to cool down the ends of thin and long heatsink ribs, as their shape doesn't allow them to dissipate the heat that well. If they were made of copper, then the story could be totally different… However, Thermaltake engineers understand the heat dissipation processes much better than we do, so you shouldn't take our opinion as a universal truth :-)

As you understand, this cooler is quite a noisy one: you can hear not only the air whistling, but also some buzzing because of the not very perfectly balanced fans.

You may have already understood that the height of this cooler can also be a serious obstacle. In some PC cases with the vertically located power supply unit fastened parallel to the mainboard, the cooler may turn out too high to fit onto the board.

Despite its size, the cooler can be very easily fastened to the CPU and gets very tightly pressed to the die. The surface being in direct contact with the die is finished well enough to arouse no reproach.

Thermaltake Volcano II

This cooler doesn't boast any unusual features. The only remarkable thing we would like to mention is the powerful 50mm fan providing efficient cooling of the aluminum heatsink.

The clip is equipped with an "ear" to screw the cooler to the PCB thus making it easy for a user to press the cooler tight enough to the processor die.

The heatsink footing is very well finished ensuring good contact with the die and perfect heat dissipation.

The only drawback we could single out here is the following. The aluminum plate the fan is installed onto doesn't sit tightly on the heatsink. To eliminate the chatter and to get the plate tightly pressed to the heatsink, you will need to bend the heatsink ribs a bit.

Yeah, and one more thing: you can hear not only the whistling sound of the air flow but also some buzzing because of the ill-balanced impeller.

Thermaltake Volcano 6 Cu+

This cooler is very similar to the previous Volcano II, but it features a higher heatsink and more powerful fan. Moreover, its footing is considerably thicker with a copper cylinder pressed into it, which allows spreading the heat through the entire heatsink more efficiently:

The footing surface pressed to the processor die is well-finished and the clip with an "ear" for a screwdriver provides good pressure.

But the cooler also has a couple of drawbacks. The 50mm fan of this cooler (which boasts the highest rpm rate of all the coolers tested, by the way) produces a lot of noise and vibrations.

Large heatsink may become a problem as well, preventing the cooler from fitting onto some mainboards.

Technical Specifications

Testbed and Methods

All coolers were tested on AMD Athlon 1GHz and 1.4GHz CPUs with 266MHz FSB. For Athlon 1GHz the nominal Vcore was set to 1.75V and for Athlon 1.4GHz - 1.85V in order to toughen the testing conditions.

The PC case of our testbed was closed and didn't have any additional coolers installed. The case was provided with 250W ATX-2001 power supply unit from Shark Technology.

All the measurements were taken at the constant room temperature of 21^oC, which was controlled throughout the entire testing session by a special infra-red "pistol"-thermometer.

The measurements made by the mainboard diodes were taken with the help of Motherboard Monitor V.5.09 utility.

The fan rotation speed measured by special sensors was not taken into consideration during the tests. The measurements were made with the help of an optical tachometer:

The fan rotation speeds for every cooler (in rotations per minute) measured by the tachometer are all listed in the table above.

After the cooler was installed, we started Windows and the PC was left in idle state for 20 minutes. After that we took the current processor temperature and ran BurnP6 program. In 30 minutes the temperature was taken another time (in Burn mode) and then the testbed was shut down for 10 minutes so that the CPU and the heatsink could cool down.

When we tested the coolers, which didn't have any special thermal interfaces, we applied KPT-8 thermal paste.

Performance

Well, all coolers seem to have coped with this task quite successfully. But the difference between the best one, Thermaltake Volcano 6 Cu+, and the worst one, "experimental" Cooler Master CH5-5K12, made 16 degrees!

As we have actually expected, the entire family of quiet Cooler Master solutions failed to compete with noisy Dragons and Volcanoes from Thermaltake. The winner on Athlon 1GHz appeared Thermaltake Volcano 6 Cu+ boasting everything necessary for proper CPU cooling: large heatsink surface, copper heart for better heat dissipation from the processor die and powerful fan.

The greater heats the CPU, the more important appears the heat conductance of the cooler material, the airflow volume blown through the heatsink ribs and the active surface of the heatsink. For this reason Cooler Master CH5-5K12 and CB5-5G12 appeared complete outsiders here. Featuring relatively small heatsink surface and less powerful fans producing weak airflow, they turned out very inefficient despite the fact that the entire heatsink of one of them is made of copper and that of the second one has a copper plate in the footing.

On the other hand, Cooler Master EP5-6I11 managed to outperform Thermaltake Volcano II although it couldn't boast a fan as powerful as that of the competitor. It succeeded thanks to larger cooled surface and better contact with the processor die.

The situation with Dragons is also very illustrative: copper Dragon Orb 3 coolers appeared better than aluminum Dragon Orb 1 ones, which is quite natural, as copper features twice as high heat conductance as aluminum. However, Dragon Orb 3 with 4,900rpm fan proved even better in practice than copper Dragon Orb 7,000rpm only due to much better finished surface of the heatsink footing providing better contact with the CPU die.

As for the winner, it again turned out Thermaltake Volcano 6 Cu+, which managed to cool down Athlon 1.4GHz 5 degrees better than the best of all its rivals, Dragon Orb 3 4,900rpm.

Conclusion

In fact, each of you can draw the conclusions yourself, depending on your needs and requirements to the cooler. But you will undoubtedly find a solution no matter if you are ready to put up with noisiness for the sake of excellent cooling, or if you are looking for an extra quiet cooler not intended for any overclocking experiments.

On our part we could say the following:

If you are an extreme overclocker, we would advise you to decide on Dragon Orb 3 and particularly Volcano 6 Cu+ from Thermaltake.

If you don't have too much free room in your PC case, then you'd better take small and quiet DP5-5G12 or DP5-6I11 from Cooler Master.

A compromising variant, rather efficient and quiet enough, is FSCUG9C-6FC from Elan Vital. Especially taking into account that in the race on Athlon 1.4GHz it yielded only to Dragon Orb 3 4,900rpm and Volcano 6 Cu+ from Thermaltake.

And as for a cooler, which could be equally quiet and efficient at the same time, you will hardly be able to find one ever, because these requirements are pretty contradicting. Maybe only a water cooling system could meet this demand, but it is a topic for a separate review, we believe…