Are heatpipes for hsf good?

[WATERBOI]

im looking to find a hsf for my dual mp2200 system, so far i've read about the hsf heatpipes and i was wondering if that is more efficient that regular hsf....i've tried to read reviews on it but it didn't tell me, so please either give me a straight link to the site or review...i guess im tired of looking cuz im starting to passout from all the reviews...thanks

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

The heatpipe based coolers from Coolermaster for AMD and Intel did very well in the reviews on:

THG AMD coolers

Go to the P4 cooler performance ratings at Overclockers.com

However, some people claim, that the heatpipe concept can not work in a tower case, as the heatpipe is not going upwards (that is where the warm liquid should go to).

To be honest I can not judge, if the good results of these HSFs are coming from the heatpipe or the simple fact, that they are made from a massive piece of copper. What I know is, that you still need a good fan. And the old equation, that more airflow gives lower temperatures is still true.

I own a coolermaster ICH-L71, which is the silent version of the P4 heatpipe HSF. It comes with a fan, that runs at 2500rpm, with that speed it is only slightely better than the Intel HSF. I replaced the fan with a YS-tech 4200rpm one and got the temperature down 3-5 degrees compared to the (already good) Intel HSF. Overclockers tested this baby with the 5800rpm YS-tech fan and got even better results, this version is currently the best HSF for P4s on overclockers.com (other sites still prefer the Swiftech or Alpha coolers).

That all boils down to:

1.) The Coolermaster heatpipe HSF are good coolers (but there are other good coolers available too)
2.) The level of cooling you want to achieve is heavily dependant on the airflow produced by the attached fan and the level of noise you are willing to take (you may even want to use one of these isane Delta-She's running at nearly 7000rpm)

Hope this helps
Cheers
Speedy

 

[bliab]

Heatpipes can be designed to work against gravity.

This is a review of a heatpipe coolermaster where the reviewer ran his tower upright and on its side without observing a difference in temperatures.

And here is a CoolerMaster figure which claims that their heatpipes are not effected by gravity.

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

Nice link, thx. As I said, I could not judge, what this reviewer was saying.

What counts at the end of the day is, that the heatpipe coolers from Coolermaster get excellent reviews, but only if used with a quite powerful fan. It does not need to be the monster from Delta, however using just the silent version with the 2500rpm fan, gives you nearly no advantage over stock cooling (at least on the P4 side, but I think P4 stock cooling is better than AMD stock cooling, isn´t it ?).

Cheers
Speedy

 

[WATERBOI]

yea noise is not an issue for me...i just want really really good cooling for a good price...cuz i have a small room and i don't have as good airflow as i want...my prior system was an athlon 650 and it's normal temp was around 95 to 115 and that's with the side case off and a big oscillating fan blowing at it from outside the case....i wish i had a bigger room..but guess not...so thanks for ur opinions....ill check out the reviews

 

[SpeedyGonzales]

Hi Waterboi,

just one more remark about what you said. A good airflow in your case is key to get the CPU temperatures down. The best cooler is worth nothing if it justs pumps hot air over your HS.

I purchased a coolermaster atc-201 tower 4 weeks ago, with 4 case fans with optimized airflow and replaced my old PSU with a better one with 3 fans and the full load temperatur of my CPU decreased by 5-7C (and it is not louder than my old case), the effect was bigger, than replacing the standard Intel HSF with the Coolermaster heatpipe HSF. OK, it was a difficult job for the new HSF, because the Intel piece is already quite good.

So try to increase the airflow in your case by using rounded IDE cables and having at least one intake and one exhaust case fan. I recommend to do this first, before investing heavily in new HSF (however, I do not know how crappy the standard AMD stuff is).

Cheers
Speedy

 

[WATERBOI]

i have 2 fans blowing in and 3 blowing out.....it's not the intake and outake that i have a prob with...it's just mostly ventalation and airflow cuz my case is inside my desk in it's little corner..pretty much wat im gonna do to solve that problem is to force more air into my case by putting an intake that will flow into the free floppy bay drive....that way i can force more cool air into it...and later on i will find a way to force hot air from the back of my case outside of it's area...i know i can solve this problem by just putting my case outside...but *sigh* once again...i can't..cuz my damn room is small...so ehhh want to but can't....but pretty much i just want a good hsf cuz i wanna cool it down as much as possible...but i don't wanna spend too much....noise i don't care about....so thanks for helping me out guys