Frostytech have written up a new Arctic Cooling heatsink, and it's interesting to see how hot this cooler gets at its slowest fan speed.

"The Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Pro is just such heatsink: ideal for mainstream CPUs that don't exceed 90W TDP.... so long as the fan speed stays at 2000RPM. Frostytech pushed the test scenario a little further than that of course. Arctic Cooling's Alpine 64 Pro is a mainstream extruded aluminum heatsink that features the companies signature suspended low noise fan. The design minimizes turbulence and the noise created by air moving over the edges of a traditional fan frame, by removing as much of the fan frame as possible."

"Today however the focus is on another technology which has seen broad adoption: exposed heatpipe bases. Like natural evolution, this thermal design technique took hold and displaced heavy copper heatspreaders about two years ago. The result is a market filled with exposed heatpipe base CPU coolers, mostly in tower form. The DeepCool's IceWing 5 Pro is however a 'suspended heatsink', which is good because it lowers total height to a moderate 131mm."

Once you get past the dark nickel plated aluminum fins that overlap on multiple levels, resembling some sort of future-fantastic piece of hardware from the Dark Knight, what really makes the Xigmatek Thor's Hammer heatsink tick are its stacked heatpipes. Yes, stacked heatpipes.

"Standing 157mm tall, Xigmatek's Thor's Hammer heatsink tips the scales at 800 grams and has a rather boxy footprint of 120 x 116mm. It accomodates one or two 120mm fans that mount to the fins with special rubber vibration absorbing posts. No fans are supplied with the Xigmatek S126384 heatsink, allowing users to pick a high speed 120mm fan or ultra quiet model of their liking"

"At the heart of the Thermaltake ISGC-200 heatsink is a glossy white impeller that vaguely resembles the petals of a daisy. The tips of the fan blades have a little notch taken out, supposedly this reduces noise by 3% too. The ISGC-200 heatsink itself stands 140mm tall, weighs 470 grams and accommodates one 92mm PWM fan that spins at 600~1600 RPM."

"The Coolermaster Hyper N520 heatsink is geared for lower-noise cooling requirements. The cooler stands 142mmmm tall, is 118mm wide and accommodates two 92mm fans that spin at 1800RPM each. The heatsink weighs 688grams and is compatible with Intel Socket 775, 771, 1366 (Socket T/J/B respectively) and the entire family of AMD Socket 939/AM2+ processors."

"Thanks to a fast 120mm fan that moves more air per minute than comparably built heatsinks, the Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer has remained a dominant force on Frostytech's Top 5 Heatsinks chart for several months now. In this review however, Frostytech is testing the 92mm edition of the Core-Contact Freezer. It doesn't stray too far from the mold, offering a compact footprint for those times when a 120mm fan is just too darn big."

"In this review Frostytech is testing the new Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir heatsink, a good CPU cooler from a manufacturer which has had a spotty past. If you can find the Titan TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir you'll find it equivalent to models like the Sunbeam Core-contact freezer. Like many tower heatsinks, the TTC-NK85TZ Fenrir heatsink has four exposed 8mm diameter direct contact heatpipes at the base. These allow heat to be efficiently conducted from the CPU to the aluminum fins without passing first through a secondary heat spreader where voids can impeed thermal conduction."

"Frostytech first saw Zalman's CNPS9900 LED heatsink at Computex Taipei this past year, today we've finally got it on the test bench! The heatsink was appropriately set to release in tandem with socket 1366 Intel Core i7 processors and is thus fully socket 775/1366 compatible."

"Coolage's Frozen Orb Z924 HDC heatsink makes use of the trendy "heatpipe direct contact" technique, except this time we're looking at a modified thermal design Coolage originally manufactured with a copper base plate. That heatsink was the Freezer Orb F0-Z924AL. Can a heatsink be retooled into an effective exposed heatpipe base CPU cooler if it wasn't originally designed as such? That's just one of the questions Frostytech will seek to answer in this review."

"If you know how quietly Arctic Cooling's past thermal solutions ran and how well they performed, I'm sure you're as interested as Frostytech is to see how Gelid's first low noise heatsink stacks up. After all, it's no small feat to construct a well performing low noise thermal solution for today's crop of multi-core Intel and AMD processors!"

Frostytech is back with a new low profile heatsink from Arctic Cooling for super slim and super compact Intel PC's - the Freezer 7 LP.

"The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 LP is a lightweight Intel socket 775 heatsink made specifically for slim-line and book-sized PC cases. It stands less than 50mm high, weighs just 260 grams and operates very quietly. Although it's 80mm 600-2000RPM PWM fan is underpowered for high temperature Intel processors, for the newer generation of sub-85W CPUs, the Freezer 7 LP is more than satisfactory. The heatsink is officially rated for heat loads up to a maximum 95W.... we'll still throw 150W at it for fun!"

Frostytech tests the new Titan Cool Idol heatsink in this review.

"Titan's Cool Idol heatsink is made from three separate aluminum fin sections joined to a copper base by six 6mm diameter copper heatpipes. The heatsink uses one 120mm PWM fan mounted on vibration absorbing rubber posts that is capable of spinning from 800-2200RPM. The use of six heatpipes and three aluminum fin sections is fairly unique, but at 850 grams in weight the Cool Idol is seriously under supported."

UPDATED - Top 5 Best Heatsinks for Intel and AMD - low noise/low temps

Quickly find the Top 5 AMD & Intel heatsinks according to FrostyTech! Find an amazingly cool CPU heatsink, or a super quiet one. The #1 Rank is considered the current Top heatsink for either low noise or low temperatures.

A rank of #10 is considered the 10th BEST. Only heatsinks that Frostytech has tested are included in these Top 5 lists. Find the heatsink you like, then click for a detailed review if available and the official thermal and acoustic test results. Frosty's just posted a new heatsink chart for November 2008!

I don't know what I'd do without Frostytech dishing out such great advice on which heatsinks to avoid, and which heatsinks are killer cool.... New from Frostytech is this review of the Evercool Transformer 6!

"Evercool has built the Transformer 6 out of three individual aluminum cooling fin segments, toped by a glistening silver 120mm fan mounted on vibration absorbing rubber posts. The arrangement of the six heatpipes is fairly unique, but more on that in a moment."

"The first thing you'll notice when looking at this Intel cooler is that NPowertek NPH-775-140HC looks very much like Intel's retail box thermal solution. The NPH-775-140HC is rated for heat loads up to 130W, however we'd suggested keeping things to energy efficient Intel CPUs that have a sub-95W TDP rating."