The heatsink looks very similar to many other heatpipe coolers today. There are three major parts to this sink. The base is looks like a small aluminum chipset cooler, but has four heatpipes jutting out from it that connect to the top radiator. The radiator is much larger, and forms many folded aluminum fins, which appear to be soldered together. Attached to this radiator is a nice looking fan which is clipped and buffered with rubber gromets to reduce vibration. I say the fan is nice looking because (a) they didn’t use a stock “square” fan, (b) the colors aren’t hideous like some horrible color schemes I’ve seen vendors use, and (c) the fan cable is sleeved in a nice black nylon mesh.
The fan is clipped on rather than using screws, which allow the fan to actually be lifted off. Taking a closer look at the radiator, we can see a pretty standard fin arrangement. Each fin grabs onto its adjacent neighbor, and the overlap acts as a spacer, which keeps the fins from being crushed together. Of course, the more fins you have, the more surface area, and theoretically the more efficient the cooler. Gelid has also increased the surface area further by adding a slight texture to each fin.
The base unit is secured to your motherboard using a flexible mounting mechanism. By default, the base comes with four metal feet (in an “X” formation). The end of these feet have the same standard pushpins that Intel’s stock cooler uses. I have a love/hate relationship with pushpin mounts. On one hand, they allow heatsinks to be installed easily without attaching hardware to the underside of the motherboard (usually requiring motherboard removal). On the other hand, plastic pushpins can break or bend, and I’ve had more than one BSOD caused by the heatsink prying itself loose (especially in tower cases where heatsinks are mounted vertically).
The base looks rather small, in comparisson and at first doesn’t look all that impressive. The underside of the base has a smooth copper contact point, which has a slight milling texture. Included on the base is a pre-applied square of Gelid’s own GC1 thermal paste. Based on our preliminary testing, this thermal compound keeps up very nicely with Arctic Silver 5, a standard thermal compound amongst hardware enthusiasts.
On the next page we test the cooler’s performance…
