We tested this HSF a couple of months ago, but thanks to its mounting mechanism, our results came out much higher than expected.
We tested this HSF a couple of months ago, but thanks to its mounting mechanism, our results came out much higher than expected. At the time we put it down to shoddy HSF design, but we soon discovered exactly what had occurred. It appears that the four rubber pads on top of the Athlon CPU prevent this HSF from making proper contact with the CPU die, and when combined with the fact that the mounting mechanism caused the motherboard to warp badly and thus make the contact even worse, it’s no surprise that it didn’t perform too well. So we have now removed the rubber pads and reinforced our motherboard with a steel plate -- factors you might like to consider if you purchase this HSF. Thanks to these small tweaks our Chernobyl results are much more accurate for HSFs that use the mounting holes around the socket on Socket A-compatible motherboards.
For the retest, we set Chernobyl to pump out 100W of heat, which is about as high as an overclocked high-end Athlon XP. The Thermalright SLK-800 was also retested for comparison, and ambient temperature was a constant 21C. A Delta EFB0812HHE 5,000rpm 60cfm fan was mounted to both HSFs, removing the variance of different fan types.
While the uber SLK-800 reached a maximum temperature of 48C, the SwiftTech came in at a single degree hotter at 49C. Very impressive.
Unfortunately, we’re still not happy about the mounting mechanism. Because the user has to screw the four mounting screws down at exactly the same tension, there’s a high chance of screwing one too tight and placing pressure on a corner of the Athlon die. So you’ll be slowly killing it. The Thermalright SLK-800, with its standard HSF clip, shows that designers needn’t go to such lengths to extract better performance out of its HSF. And the Swiftech is also much larger than the SLK-800, making it less suitable for those with crowded CPU sockets.
Having said that, the MCX 462+ does offer top shelf performance, regardless of a couple of minor flaws.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012