CoolerMaster 0wnz the HSF Market! (1 Viewer)

[Brett DiMichele]

Hey Folks,
Many of you may remember that I was on a quest to find a
great HSF for my NON OverClocked Pentium 4 machine. Some
may even remember JonR flaming me for being so anal about
getting a Great HSF for a NON Clocked machine.
Hey this is all about fun and if you got it, Spend it!
So I went to www.directron.com about a month ago and asked
if they could special order me CoolerMaster's Everest HSF
which is an all Copper HSF with Heat Pipe Technology.
Much to my suprise I recieved an email from Jason at Directron
and he was more than gratious enough to special order me
that cooler.
Well, that took over a month! Not Jason's fault mind you.
I believe CoolerMastere shipped it over from China on the
Paddle Boat (even slower than the Slow Boat From China)
Today the nice Mr.OOps man showed up to deliver my package
of doom! The CoolerMaster HSF had arrived. I opened the package
only to find that CoolerMaster shipped Jason the wrong cooler.
After looking at it and reading the box I determined that
they sent me a HSF that uses the same HSF as the Everest
but this particular unit is called the Fujiyama and it uses
an ultra quiet fan (Looks like a Sunon). No harm no foul, I
am not about to wait for another month while CoolerMaster
paddles the right one across the pond.
So I take it out of the packaging and what shocks me most
is the substantial weight and the finish. This thing has a
polished finish that would embarass most engine compartments
of show cars.
When I flip the cooler upside down there is a sticker over
the entire CPU Die surface area of the HSF.. I remove this
sticker expecting to find some cheesy heat pad. Nope, just
a perfectly shiny lapped base. They included a package of
white thermal grease.
I took my time and masked off the base of the HSF just large
enough to extend slightly beyond the dimensions of the P4's
IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader). Then I cleaned the area with
Isopropyl Alcohol and I applied enough Arctic SilverII
Compound to cover the area. I used a piece of plastic wrap
over my finger to spread the compound. I throughly cleaned
and re applied Arctic Silver II to the CPU's IHS in the
same fashion.
Installing these CoolerMaster HSF's is a snap, literaly. The
Heat Sink makes use of the stock Intel HSF base that comes
on every P4 Mother Board. The CoolerMaster has fingers that
enguage this base and use cam locks to FIRMLY seat the unit.
So does this thing work? Well, as other Arctic Silver users
know, it takes a day or so for the AS to completly bond with
the CPU and HSF surfaces. I fired up [email protected] which I always
run as a foreground application (all the time) and that uses
100% of my 1.8 Ghz P4 needless to say it generates heat.
Before with another CoolerMaster aluminum HSF, which in and
of it's self was not a bad cooler, I was running at 115-120
Degrees Farenheight. (No celcius here please, this is America!)
And after installing the CoolerMaster Fujiyama Heat Pipe?
109 Degrees Farenheight!
Is that a drop? I would say so! I expect as the AS II
settles in it may even drop and stay below 100 Degrees.
And all this cooling goodness will cost you a mere $37.00
which makes it a clear cut winner over anything that ThermalRight,PAL
or Swiftech have to offer. Plus in the tests I have seen the
CoolerMaster bested, the best by at least 9 degrees.
So if you are a cool freak (Overclocked or not) this is a
worthwhile HSF to check out!
And yes they even make one for those AMD chips!

 

[Matt Stryker]

Some people will pay anything to be cool....

Just kidding Brett, I've seen some of those setups on overclock sites and they look pretty neat. Make sure you get one of those little mini-vacs too; those dust bunnies can cause heat buildup and are tough to get off heatsink fins.

 

[Rusty Ray]

i have that one too but the only complaint i have is that its a bit loud... well, compared to the stock fan i had in the athlon xp 1700+

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Rusty,

They make 2 versions. I have the low noise pollution version

the fan blows 26CFM of air where as the other version blows

46 CFM and is substantialy louder. For the Athlon's they

only make a loud version.

 

[Rob Lutter]

But, I like that hairdryer noise in my computer case... I wanna know that it is working
With AMD, you have ~ 10 seconds to power down the computer after the fan fails till the CPU crashes and BURNS

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

With AMD, you have ~ 10 seconds to power down the computer after the fan fails till the CPU crashes and BURNS

Tom's Hardware Guide made a video of what happens when you remove the HSF while playing Quake 3. Two different AMD chips crashed and burned in about one second, faster than the motherboard's monitoring circuit could take action. The temperature measured on the surface of the chip was 700 degrees F. The extreme heat also damaged the motherboard. A P3 chip crashed but did not destroy itself. A P4 chip detected the overheat condition and merely slowed itself down as much as it needed to keep cool, they measured 84 degrees F on the chip.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Wayne,
Speed Step technology, Ain't it great?
I wish my car could do what the P4 can do when it senses
an overheat condition (just shut off a few cylinders).
I believe the P4 begins to cut back the processing power
at 155 degrees or so.
The fact that AMD's fry within a second merly shows how
overworked they are even in non OC'd form just to do what
a P4 can do without breaking a sweat. And these guys OC
those things???? Yeesh!

 

[Jeff Kleist]

P4s would do the same thing w/o SpeedStep. The new AMD chips have the throttle-down technology.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Jeff,

P4's do not typicly run as hot as the similar speed AMD

Processor though.

It is a moote point I guess, I surely would not run my P4

without a HSF reguardless of the safety features built in.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Nobody would advocate running a P4 without a HSF but it's good to know that there won't be a meltdown should the HSF clamp spontaneously break and the HSF fall off the chip.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Wayne,
I SO agree

 

[John_Bonner]

But, I like that hairdryer noise in my computer case... I wanna know that it is working

I bought my HSF and extra case fan from Sidewinder if anyone is interested in how a fan "sounds" before they buy it, Sidewinder has a "Hear our Fans" page which gives you decibel levels and lets you download actual MP3's of the fans. And yes some of them do sound like hairdryers!

 

[Drew Wimmer]

alpha makes an equivalent of their pal8045(socketA hsf) for the p4 (I forget the model #, 89-something) that works pretty well, i favor it myself 'cause it accepts an 80mm fan so you can still keep it relatively cool without your rig sounding like a 747 on takeoff at 10 meters that and the fact that it's thermal resistance is .23C/W whereas that of the fujiyama is .4 (lower is better)
you may just wanna send that thing back to directron man, or at least swap the fan out, the everest has a thermal resistance of .25C/W (with disgustingly loud fan), which while it's still not as good as the 89-whatever, it's considerably better than the fujiyama, and aside from that, it looks a lot better than the alpha's offering

 

[AjayM]

Well, just to add a little bit I have an AMD Tbird 1Ghz at home and had a HSF failure, now this was a cheap OEM $12 HSF so it wasn't a huge slab of copper/aluminum like most of the real HSF's are. The case had one exhaust fan on it plus the power supply fan.

Windows became unstable during 3d gaming (was playing Flight Sim 2k when I noticed), but for normal desktop use I probably would have never noticed. Temps went up quite a bit, even past the AMD top level (I think I saw around 100-105c but no more). Since I discovered the problem that evening, I just made a quick duct, turned the case fan around and was back up and running using the case fan with temps in the high 60's (but I didn't try to do anything that would require high CPU usage).

When I replaced the HSF, everything went back to normal (and that was over a year ago) and I actually replaced it with something semi-decent this time so I got some lower temps again.

I didn't have any smoke, no fires, etc. Tom's test of was interesting, but also a little stacked by running those grueling CPU torture tests. I would have liked to see what happens at small CPU usage (figure normal everyday computing) if the actual HSF comes off.

Also when you guys are looking at HSF's, be aware that the ZIF socket has a rating on it for how heavy a HSF you can attach to it (with the clips), and most of those ultra-heavy duty HSF's exceed it by a fairly high margin (like double or more), most of the higher quality HSF's are now board mounted, but a few aren't. Just something to keep in mind when shopping around.

Andrew

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Andrew-
YIKES! the max temp that any AMD cpu is supposed to be able to tolerate is 90*C, but even then only for a short while, you got reeaaally lucky
and the new alphas (for socketA and 478) are board mounted, they'd rip the socket off the pcb otherwise

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Drew,

The Fujiyama was sent to me by mistake. I ordered the Everest

which has a 6K RPM YS Tech Fan rated at 45+ CFM of air (70mm)

and yes it's noisy. The Fujiyama comes with a 2500 RPM YS

Tech that flows 25ish CFM and is super quiet. The HSF units

themselves are exactly the same and by swapping fans you

can up the thermal efficiency. I installed a 6000 RPM fan

from my old aluminium Cooler Master HSF and the temps dropped

even more and this other fan is not real loud at all.

I am also running Arctic Silver II between between the CPU

and the P4's IHS.

Every test I have seen placed the CoolerMaster Everest at

least 5-10 degrees ahead of the competition (Pal and Sk6)

the Heat Pipe Technology does work well.

My biggest gripe about the competition is thier pricing.

I picked up the CoolerMaster for $36.00 and that's half

the price of a PAL with Fan and the SK6 with fan.

Ajay,

The Fujiyama and Everest from CoolerMaster are all Mother

Board Mounted. Intel (Unlike AMD) Mandates that thier own

and other P4 Motherboards all use the same attatchment

method. On the P4 Mobo's they have a black plastic mount

that is affixed directly to the motherboard. Intalling a

HSF on a 478 Pin board is as simple as snapping the 2 cam

lock clips. Some other HSF's like the Zalmans screw through

the Mobo but I prefer the OEM method. It is holding this

massive HSF no problem.

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Brett-

could you point me to these tests? i haven't been able to find a single page (in english anyway, and none of the foreign pages have any numbers i can read) that had test results of any sort for the fujiyama or the everest, only links to their socketA counterparts

i ask because I may be building an intel rig this summer for an HTPC, if the fujiyama and everest are as good as you work them up to be then id certainly use them in place of the 8942 which i currently plan to use

 

[AndyVX]

Hey everyone,
I'd just like to ask what program I should download for getting a reading of my CPU/mobo temps? I don't like having to restart the computer, and enter the BIOS each time I want to check.
I downloaded one program, called "Motherboad Monitor" (I think) but it didn't work. After loading it up, it wouldn't give me the temps of anything. It just reported everything as 0 degree's.
I've just added a second hard drive, and will be adding a GeForce4 as soon as it arrives to my computer, and I'm a little worried about the case temp. Should I buy a case fan to mount in the front-bottom of my case as an air intake?
Thanks a bunch.
(I would have started a new thread for this, but this one seem somewhat along the same lines... hope everyone doesn't mind? )

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Drew,
I will try and find that review again. But the review I
read may have been for the Socket A model. Even if the review
was for a Socket A the Everest still outperformed the PAL
and SK6's used in the test. After they concluded that the
Everest did infact drop the temps below what the SK6 and
the PAL were capeable of, they hacked apart the Everest to
show that the heat pipes were real, what they looked like
inside and that there was liquid in them.
I will look later tonight

 

[Drew Wimmer]

Andrew-
motherboard monitor needs to know where it's supposed to get it's data from before it can display anything, thermal monitoring hardware is different for every chipset, so it'll vary across motherboards (mbm is the right program to have btw )
and if you don't currently have any air moving through your case, yes, add fans, but be smart about it, the efficiency of your airflow is just as important, if not more important, than having high airflow volume
1) make sure you've got roughly the same amount of air entering and exiting your case, a little bit of positive pressure is good to keep dust out (bit more input than output)
2) make sure you've got your air moving in one general direction (this shouldn't be a problem so long as you use the stock fan mounts for your case, that is, no cutting blowholes)
You can also get card coolers that mount in the case below the video card (assuming you're using a tower-type case): http://www.plycon.com/coolgear.htm
something like that first item there is what I'm talking about, it's not absolutely necessary, but if you can't get temps low enough in your case with regular fans, it's good to have a little extra protection for something as expensive as the gf4 you're buying
Brett-
ahh, ok, that makes a bit more sense then
the thermal resistance for the PAL8045 (Alpha's latest socketA hsf) is .05 C/W higher than the PAL8942 (with the same fan, I'm not quite sure how that works, the heatsinks look identical save for the mounting gear)
regardless, I'm still interested in seeing the review when you find it, if for nothing else than just for better awareness of what's out there, I've been somewhat detached because my priorities have shifted more towards academics the end of the semester