Socket-A Cooler Roundup: September 2001

Introduction

Almost six months have passed since our last cooler roundup - and in that time, quite a bit has been happening on the cooler market. Today, we see more copper coolers than ever before, and more models are using larger fans.

For this roundup, we used the same testing methodology as in the last roundup, published in March. This means that the temperature data and noise measurements from this roundup can be directly compared to the the last roundup .

This time, we're reviewing a selection of 18 new heatsinks, many of them with different fan/fan speed combinations. All in all, this resulted in 29 indivitual tests. Each test takes an hour, and to make sure the values are correct, we do each test three times. In other words, this roundup is the result of 87 hours of heatsink testing.

Let's have a look at the cooling performance tests first.