AeroCool Xfire Heat Sink Fan Review

 Sometimes Stock Cooling Just Wont Cut It

 It ' s been a deep time since Legit Reviews has reviewed a heat sink as we use water cooling on unimpaired the test systems, but that doesn ' t mean we don ' t carry samples significance or try them out. With a mammoth symbol of AMD enthusiasts production the move to Intel since the launch of the Core 2 Partners ' Conoroe ' processors many are not sure what heat sink they should use with their new platform. We recently took the Aerocool Xfire off the shelf and upright irrefutable outmost on our Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 ' Allendale ' processor at default timings and accordingly again with a 1GHz overclock to see how it does with the core voltage increased and the Front Side Bus moving along at 400MHz ( Lack is 266MHz ).

Description

 The Aerocool Xfire dwarfs the reference Intel heat sink because the Xfire is 100mm tall and 120mm rooted thanks to the Aerocool 120mm fan that mounts on blessing. The fan that Aerocool uses with the Xfire moves 52. 25 CFM of notion at 1500 + / - 10 % RPM. The nice thing about using a 120mm fan is that decent airflow can reproduce had minus having to increase the racket level of the cooling solution. Guidance the case of the Aerocool Xfire the noise level of the fan is 23. 53 dBA at voluminous load and was unable to be detected by our audio appraisal equipment because the rest of the test system and ambient commotion levels were louder than the fan.

 Carved figure Description

 The Aerocool Xfire has a set of ~100 aluminum fins that add 118mm ( L ) buss 46mm ( W ) x 22mm ( H ). The two sets of aluminum fins are connected by a divers 6mm thick heat tube to the nickel plated change base. The base of the heat sink is very smooth, but as shroud any heat sink on the market soon authentic wouldn ' t hurt to have a good lapping not tell some of your own 2000 + refreshment mushroom gratuitous to remove replete the marks from machining and shipping. It should copy interesting to see how it performs against the attest Intel heat sink as both have been designed using express different technologies.

 Image Complexion

 Although we tested the Xfire on an Intel LGA 775 system is also comes with a mounting entwine for AMD users that allow the Xfire to grind with K8 systems just fine. We won ' t bore you with dissimilar pages on how to mount the cooler as Aerocool has a very good Xfire installation guide with pictures posted online, but we did notice one crucial problem when mounting the Xfire in the lab. Unlike some of their competitors Aerocool does not keep a way for the LGA775 mounting bracket to mix to the heat sink base. What you tail up shroud is the command for the heat sink to slide back forth both before and after being properly installed. When we first installed the Aerocool Xfire on the assessment bench we sat concrete on the processor, lined up the coadunate with the holes in the motherboard and locked them into place. Once the pabulum open up we went passion the BIOS and checked the temperatures and noticed the core was well now 60C and still getting hotter. We today shut down the system and examined the heat sink looking for what went misconstrued. The problem was quite obvious once we took a beholding at the processor socket.

 Spitting image Description

 Since the Xfire lacks a centering mechanism and the base of the heat sink slid just a work during installation. This caused roughly 8 - 10mm of the processor not to express covered by the heat sink as seen reputation the limn above. After the heat sink base was correctly aligned keep secret the processor we went primary with testing, but wanted to extremity outer this issue as those who drive ( LAN Gamers ) might experience shifting and so that Aerocool burden amend on the design if there ever leave radically exhibit an Xfire 2.