Artic Silver may be the first name people mention when they are asked about a thermal paste manufacturer, but their products have all one thing in common: they are solid.

When I first heard about Coollaboratory Liquid Pro, I was a bit surprised from the fact that it was... well, liquid. How can you apply that to the heatsink? So I asked the person who had recommended it to me and I ordered one. Soon after that I had the chance to try it on my (then) brand new Core 2 and the results were quite good indeed. With a Ninja Plus and it's retail fan, I obtained a 0,16ºC/W (Temperature rise per Watt) wich is rather impressive if you ask me. I gave a good part of the credit to Coollaboratory, either that or I had been lucky with a really outstanding Ninja sample.

The reviews I checked placed this liquid thermal solution about 5ºC lower than the best Artic Silver, ergo I probably had both a good sample and the adequate thermal compound. I was happy with that and left it there. It was difficult and dangerous to apply, but in the end it paid off.

When it comes to air cooling, there's nothing better than a 120mm heatsink-fan combination but, sometimes, this kind of cooler might be incompatible with your motherboard, or you have to forget about a couple of DIMM sockets (if the heatsink is of a square shape). In this case, you can always look at the next step dowm the ladder, the 90mm coolers, but that's giving up a lot of cooling performance... isn't it?

Thermalright recently raised the bar for 120mm units with their undisputed champion: the Ulltra-120 eXtreme. Now, they turn their attention to 90mm ones for the next strike. Strictly speaking, it's not a 90mm combo, because it can also work with a 120mm fan attached, but provided you have the space for the bigger one, you get the overcloking potential only the best coolers offer (Tuniq 120, Thermalright Ultra-120, Scythe Infinity with push-pull fans, Scythe Ninja Plus B with a SilenX IXTREMA). And the best news are that swapping it for a 90mm fan only decreases it's capabilities by less than 1%!

Temperatures reached at sotck speed as well as noise levels (when using the right fan) are also among the best of the 120mm world, regardless of your fan size choice.

Link: Anandtech. 

X-bit labs has completed a review about Zalman's latest addition to it's line of graphics cards cooling solutions, and it could be what you needed to silence that fast spinning little bugger once and for all.

In it's current incarnation, the VNF100 can cool efficiently up to a GeForce 7900 GS. Efficiently, here, means that it will do the job of the standar cooler, but without the fan. Installation seems easy if you watch Zalman's Flash how-to, but be sure not to encounter problems like these:

"I would like to point out a few things here. First, as you can see, two memory chips on the front of the PCB will remain without heatsinks, because the heatpipes won’t let you put them on. Although on other graphics cards this may not be the problem. Secondly, since the heatsink is actually positioned behind the graphics card, then you need to make sure that there are no components in the area around the PCI Express graphics card slot on the mainboard that would rise above 40mm. In our case, we had to remove the tall Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II cooler from the mainboard chipset, but again, this is an individual case. I don’t think that many of you will have tall heatsinks/coolers in that area, but nevertheless, make sure you check it out in advance."

If you aren't lucky with Zalman there's not much hope left, as they offer the widest range of possibilities for compatibility with different graphic cards. 

Thermo-Electric cooling is used with conventional heatsinks to achieve sub-ambient temperatures. Water cooling aims to dissipate as much heat as needed. Could a combination ot the two reach both goals?

That must be what Swiftech considered when designing the MCW6500-T, a water block that seeks the assistance of Peltier's discovery. And that must be, too, what someone at OverclockersClub felt like checking.

They state that the MCW6500-T is best suited to processors that do not produce too much heat (remember, the heat from the TEC is added), but overclock 50% or more with no increase of CPU voltage. If you meet those parameters (your CPU more precisely), this cooling device can give you a couple of hundred more MHz while keeping it around or below ambient temperature.

It's not easy to install. It's not phase-change. But if you are planning a system based around the upcoming 45nm processors, it could be suitable for summer in hot places.
 

Dailytech has the story.

"The first heatsink to make use of directional carbon nanotubes, the OCZ Hydrojet, was on display at Computex 2007. Carbon nanotubes, an allotrope of carbon, are widely regarded as the next major thermal interface material because of their superior thermal conduction properties."

OCZ claims carbon-nanotubes are five times more efficient than copper. But, what the heck is a carbon nanotube? Basically, a cylinder with a diameter of some nanometers.

Unlike copper, which moves heat radially, carbon nanotubes move heat in one direction. This is supposed to be a much better scenario.

Thermaltake and  Scythe have gone definitely mad:

- a DUOrb GPU cooler, with two fans and dual heatpipes? It's like getting two Zalman's VF900 and putting them together in the same graphics card. And this is only the begining, because there's also....

- a northbridge cooler with a 10.5cm fan (Scythe Kodachi). Bigger than most CPU heatsinks of not a very long time ago. Nothing, if we compare it to...

- a concept 30cm CPU fan and heatsink from Scythe. This is simply outrageous, watercooling capacity but without the water. Will they include the case? It's not clear where all that hot air is going in a conventional one.

In a world were EVERY component inside a computer consumes so much power, perhaps going mad is the only sane solution. 

Link: Bit-tech.

 

Nexus Techology is a company specialized in silent computing. Established in The Netherlands in 2000, they are better than some bigger names if we talk about case fans, for example. Specially worthy of consideration is their line of "Real Silent Case Fans". But those are no novelty.

What bring us here today is "The Nexus Frizzbee Inaudible HDD Cooler". Before you start scratching your head, let's clarify that the frisbee is only the package, the fan gets into your case alone. As a fan, it's supossed to be: inaudible, easy to install and that will extend the lifetime of your HDD. As a frisbee, you will have to wait until we get one in our labs for some flying tests.                 

            - Dimensions:                     101.6x94.6x17.8mm      
            - Fan Dimensions:               60x60x15 mm                               
            - Bearing Type:                  Sleeve Bearing      
            - Rated Voltage:                 12 Volts      
            - Rated Current:                 0.03 A      
            - Rotation Speed:               1500 RPM      
            - Noise Level:                    Inaudible! (<15 dB(A))      
            - Airflow:                           6.4 CFM

By popular demand, silentpcreview finally decided to include this fan in their second part of "SPCR's Fan Roundup [...]: 120mm Fans". Ixtrema Pro fans are relatively easy to find, have an average price (for a quality fan) an look as cool as those with neon lights.

Although they only label it as "worth experimenting with", it has good numbers to back it up. Nothing to do with the advertised 11 dBA and 46 CFM, but pretty much the same as the winner when using low voltages.

It would be a good thing if the first part of the roundup were to be retested using their new methodology, because, as it is, you can't compare results.

In any case, even if there exists a slightly better fan that rotates faster, moves more air and produces less sound, when moving to 5V the differences kind of disappear and then it really lives up to the marketing of best-airflow-to-noise-ratio. If you swap your no name fan for one of these, you will notice for sure.

If you've ever had a noisy fan inside your case, you already know how annoying they can be. So, when you replace it with a brand new one, you want to make sure your money is well spent.

The rule here is: the bigger the better. But even 120mm fans can sometimes be hard to pick. You can't believe their rated specs, except for RPMs (wich are easily monitored). This information is more often than not insufficient to find what you look for. In the end, the equation you must solve for your particular purposes involves dBs and CFMs. Getting reliable data about how loud a given fan turns out is relatively easy. Achieving the same regarding it's cooling prowess wasn't; until those ingenious guys at silentpcreview found out a new way for measuring airflow.

Just look below at what they came up with. Hats off to them.

Those mad people over at MadShrimps have been conducting some tests on the latest and greatest CPU heatsinks to find out which one is the best for overclocking.

They continue their testing of the latest CPU heatsinks on a reference Socket 775 system. This time new contestants from Coolermaster and Scythe enter the fray. Processor heatsinks on test include an Intel Reference S775 Heatsink, Coolermaster Eclipse, Coolermaster Mars, Coolermaster Hyper TX , Scythe Ninja, Titan Amanda, TEC TTIC BIG, Zalman CNPS9700LED.

 Whether you're looking for extreme silence or extreme performance, you don't want to miss this.