Arctic Cooling Freezer 4

Hitting the scales at 490 grams, this Socket 478-only CPU air cooling unit is on the fringe of worry-free weight.

Hitting the scales at 490 grams, this Socket 478-only CPU air cooling unit is on the fringe of worry-free weight to be hanging off the mobo. With four copper heatpipes pushed through aluminium fins, it's starting to sound mighty familiar.

But then there's the fan. With such a style one might find on a blimp or an old pre-OH&S-days desk fan, it's fins are quite deep at 42mm and it has no protective encapsulation. The reasoning behind the lack of a fan frame was to reduce the noise. And it's all peachy, as you could safely lick it whilst in action and the best it'd manage is a hot tongue massage. We nearly tried it ourselves, but were distracted by a shiny distant object.

Using the supplied thermal goop (MX-1) is like smearing day-old bird poop. Constantly breaking up and not willing to stay on the surface, a smooth thin smear is impossible to create. Considering the idea is merely to fill any air holes that may be lingering between the two surfaces, this isn't easily doable with such a solid solution. We instead used a thin layer of our trusty no-name white transcendent heatsink-spooge.

We whacked it on Chernobyl's 80W hot core, in an ambient room temperature of 28°C. Spinning quietly, it managed a particularly unexciting 51°C. A result of a having no frame, we noticed some air wasn't even being directed across the fins.

If mediocrity rattles your bell, and you intend on solely cooling a socket 478 system, jingle your apathetic self in this general direction. It's acceptable.