- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU Cooler Review

Cooling/CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2008-07-02

Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU got a special treatment from the Intel thermal management department; a fancy large CPU cooler with 110cm LED fan and copper heat column. How does it compare to the other Intel reference coolers? Is it an alternative for 3rd party heatsinks, let us find out!

Closer Look & Installation

Closer Look

This heatsink is quite similar in design to some of the Zalman CNPS coolers we have tested in the past; the fan sits embed inside the heatsink, the aluminum fins extend towards the outer edges of the fan to increase the total surface area which can be used for cooling.

Looking at the HSF from the side reveals that the lower part is smaller in diameter to avoid issues installing the unit on motherboards which feature larger northbridge cooling solutions.

Madshrimps (c)

Zooming in onto one particular area of the HSF reveals a small switch which controls the fan speed; setting it to “high” will allow you the fan to speed up to maximum rpm of 2900, when you set it to “low” the fan rpm tops out at ~2000.

Madshrimps (c)

The transparent fan is only slightly smaller than a reference 120mm fan, which is too bad as you won’t be able to swap it out if you want to modify it with a quieter unit.

Madshrimps (c)

The base of the unit is copper and nicely finished. In the photo below we removed the pre-applied thermal paste which Intel puts on all their bundled heatsinks.

Madshrimps (c)

Installation

As you can see in the photo above, this heatsink uses push pins, motherboard removal is recommended in order to be able to reach all the push-pins.

Madshrimps (c)

Inside the Antec Sonata 2 the Extreme Intel HSF fits with room to spare;

Madshrimps (c)

Onto the test setup ->

Comment from Sidney @ 2008/07/02

I want one.

Make that two.

Comment from thorgal @ 2008/07/02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sidney

I want one.

Make that two.

You serious ? Or do you just want the cpu that comes with it

Anyway, just food for thought : would the heatsink do better when combined with a 45nm quad core (for which it is intended) ? Heat load would be spread more evenly over the HS with 4 cores... Any thoughts ?

Comment from jmke @ 2008/07/02

most apps are single threaded, which would mean the cores would be loaded differently most of the time, causing uneven heat creation over the HSF base

Comment from Sidney @ 2008/07/02

Just the cooler. I'll be frank that I really find not much of use the way I compute in using quad core.

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.