I have reviewed many AOpen motherboards over the time I have run OCmodshop and now I have the chance to take a look at one of their heatsinks. I have always been pretty fond of AOpen motherboards for their ability to offer a high quality product with a lot of features.
AOpen’s motherboards have never really been great as far as overclocking boards but that’s not really what they are intended to be for. This is the ACK7L which is designed for socket A CPUs up to a 3200+ which is the fastest on the market right now.
This heatsink comes packed in somewhat abnormal fashion, it looks more like a spindle of CD-RWs not a heatsink. Either way its nice to see something different than the standard plain box. From the side of the package you can also see that the heatsink is quite large due to the ducting that it comes with.
This heatsink is really tall because of the ducting system they have incorporated. It looks to be a pretty standard heatsink with a shroud to make it quieter. The fan on this heatsink is a 2 Ball bearing Nidec D08T-12PH which is 80X80X25 mm. The fan spins at 2400 RPM that pushes 31.8 CFM while making 26 dB of noise. This heatsink is designed to be quiet and this fan looks like it should accomplish that pretty well.
From the side of the heatsink you can see the 43 copper skived fins that AOpen decided to use. The fins are jointless meaning they are not soldered in place, this makes for better heat dissipation. The top of the heatsink has a circular cutout so the shroud will be blowing directly over the fins and wont lose any air out of the sides.
The clip on this heatsink requires a screwdriver to be installed which isn’t the best option. The nice thing about the clip though is that it uses all six tabs on the socket to hold it tightly in place. The base of the heatsink is finished really well with no real blemishes that will affect performance. The base also comes with a pre-applied silver based thermal pad which is fine for systems not concerned about overclocking. If you are going to be overclocking or simply want better results from the heatsink I would suggest some Arctic Silver 5 which was just released.
I will be using an Albatron KM18G Pro with my Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) and will be using Motherboard Monitor to get the temperature readings of the CPU. I will be using Arctic Silver 5 as the thermal compound because it is the best on the market. Idle temperatures were taken while idling in Windows XP and the load temperatures were achieved by using Prime95 to put the CPU at 100% load.
I went ahead and installed this heatsink to my normal test bed which went pretty well. This clip requires a screwdriver to be used which is always a bad thing because they can slip off and damage your hardware. This was not a problem with my system because the clip ended up being at the top of the motherboard where there was really nothing to damage. Installation went well and nothing was a problem, however this heatsink is really tall so there may be a problem if you have a small case.
Test Bed
- Albatron KM18G Pro (review to come)
- 1800+ Thoroughbred
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- 1024MB PC3200 Corsair TwinX
- Onboard GeForce 4 MX440
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- SilenX 400w PSU (review to come)
- AOpen AC7L2 heatsink
I booted up the system and let it idle for about 20 minutes and took the readings after I got a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius. I then ran Prime95 for about 15 minutes. After getting the CPU to load it came to 42 degrees Celsius which isn’t a bad temperature. The heatsink did a really good job cooling my CPU while staying pretty quiet. As you can see the Thermalright SLK-800 did perform better but this did not surprise me much.
Conclusion:
AOpen has again shown that they are able to produce really high quality products. This heatsink did a really good job, better than I thought it would and I am glad to say that. With my past experience with their motherboards I did not expect to get such good results from this heatsink.
I really like that a copper design was used, that all six tabs are used to secure it in place, and that an 80mm fan is used rather than a 60mm. I did not like that a thermal pad was used or that it needed a screwdriver to be installed. Also this heatsink is very tall so problems may arise if this is being installed to a smaller case.
Overall I am really happy with this heatsink and would recommended it to a normal user and to the avid overclocker. I am going to give this heatsink an 8/10 and award it the OCmodshop Seal of Approval. I would like to thank AOpen for sending me this heatsink.
Pros
- Performs well
- Quiet
- Clip uses all 6 tabs
- Full copper design
- Ducting system to allow for 80mm fans
Cons
- Screwdriver needed for installation
- Might be too tall for some systems
- Thermal pad