The Heatsink
As the pictures show, the heatsink design is very different from a standard heatsink. The base looks very cool with the area around the CPU die having a sandblasted texture - I don't know how you would take it, but the texture of the copper base looks REALLY unique to us. The actual bottom portion of the heatsink that makes contact with the processor has a nice finish although it is does not have the polished, mirror look. Instead the pattern looks like concentric circles from a point in the middle all the way outwards. Unfortunately the camera could not pick this out clearly but the pattern is noticeable due to the refraction of light in a couple of the pictures.
Instead of a huge block of metal, Gigabyte uses a heatpipe design made famous by Shuttle in their SFF PCs. The profile of the base seems quite a bit smaller than a lot of the larger heatsinks we have in the lab. The only potential problem are the 'wings' that come off the side which may run into the same capacitor problems as larger heatsinks would in tight socket areas. The fins on the heatsink are mounted horizontally and the fan itself is more of a cylindrical air scoop, pulling air from both the top and bottom directions and pushing it from the center of the heatsink outwards. If you look at the very top picture of this page you'll note that this air movement is possible due to the half inch clearance between the top of where the CPU core would lie to the point where the heatpipes and fins intersect.
The top of the cooler lights up blue courtesy of 4 LEDs. The LEDs are of high quality and are VERY bright - much brighter than many LEDs we have seen lately including the ones off of the Thermaltake Coolmod and the BFG Asylum 5900. Subjectively they are brighter than the ones off of the Aerocool Extreme as well and they are attached a lot more securely; the Aerocool tapes the LEDs around the outside of the fan while the ones on the Gigabyte are secured inside the actual fan unit. You can see from the below picture that the LED's are covered by a clear plastic - this plastic has a sandblasted texture and spreads the light very effectivel. This is easily one of the brightest, most impressive looking LED fans we've ever seen!
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| See how that glows?! |
A neat feature about this cooler is that it mounts not only to Socket A CPUs but it will also work on P4s and Athlon 64's and futhermore all the clips are provided too. Switching between different CPU types is quite easy; the tool-less design of the heatsink works well and allows you to swap clips with little hassle or effort. The mounting clips arent actually mounted onto the heatsink but it holds the heatsink to the socket through pressure alone - before you have the clips mounted to the socket they actually slide around freely! Initially this made us a bit leery but it seemed to hold well to our Athlon XP.
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