Nathan Davis sees red in the night sky.
Nonsensical cooling units such as this 'Aurora', an apparently luminous atmospheric phenomenon device, bewilder us Atomic labs monkeys. Why? All for making a visually appealing unit, many manufacturers are stacking up on the pretty parts rather than what matters - the performance. Sure, copper looks trippy but if no decent level of thought is put into a design, the benefits are scarce.
This widget primarily consists of an array of copper fins layered around a large, copper pipe in a centrifugalish manner. Just because it's copper doesn't mean a lack of design ingenuity won't matter. It does. Why the convexly curved fin shapes? If they didn't have this sizable shape cut into them on either side, the overall heatsink would have more surface area to pass heat through, and thus cool slightly more effectively. Down the centre of the fins is a massive heatpipe Bitspower have called a 'Heat-Column'. Despite its name, it doesn't appear to work exceptionally well at all.
Firing up our heat-monger Chernobyl to the usual 80W, in ambient 22° sitting on our Athlon XP plate, it levelled at a dull 53°. The Gigabyte 3D Cooler Ultra comparison HSF spat out a much nicer 48°. If it had more, larger fins and several well-placed heat pipes, the design would be more efficient. True heatpipes do a lot for heatsinks. Unlike the heated fins, the blue frame that is made of an aluminium alloy is always cold. Not surprisingly it's not attached as part of the cooling system, so it isn't effective in the slightest.
The two good things about this HSF are its lighter than the usual copper heatsink and a low noise level. It's barely audible when flicked on, all thanks to the kit being packed with an 80mm 2500rpm fan. However, this also partially explains the lack of heat annihilation.
It seems this was a try at a look-good HSF with no real thought put into making it a brilliant cooling unit. It 'works' fine, and if you're after a heatsink that'll just do the job, this would be acceptable, but as a performance heatsink it's unspectacular. Considering its expensive mediocrity, it's a possible contender for FrisbeeMark'04 Deluxe.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012