At this point we
come to the sad part of the review. Can everyone please have a moment of
silence for the dead Duron 750 that I now have after installing the WBK38 on
it. While I cannot say that the chipped corner is the fault of the WBK38, I
will say that Global Win needs to redesign their clips. It is pretty much
impossible to install this heat sink without a screwdriver to push the clip
down. Alpha's clip design is much better than Global Win and theirs could still
use some work. The WBK38 had no clearance problems fitting on the Abit KT7A.
Thirty minutes
after installing the WBK38 I went down to the local pub and drank away my tears
over the dead Duron. I tried like a mofo the next day to find another CPU here
local without luck. That is why we are here now one week late on the review. I
blame the dead Duron mainly on AMD since I had no problem installing the WBK38
on Intel processors. Hopefully the next core revision will be fixed in this
regard.
I finally
procured a Thunderbird 650, courtesy of
Overclock Warehouse
so that I could find out just how good this heat sink was. I let the system run
for a day or two while I played around with seeing how high I could over clock
the 650. I don't have any temps from the Intel processor because my BH6 doesn't
support CPU temp monitoring and I honestly don't think the Celeron2 running at
850mhz was going to tax the WBK38. First I do have to say that yes this fan
sounds like a freaking hairdryer. Does it bother me? I have my two computers
in my bedroom running 24/7 about six feet from where I sleep. I have not been
bothered by the fan since after the first 10 minutes when I went to bed that
night. It will bother some people but it was easy for me to get used to it. I
will note that I cannot hear any of the other fans in my systems because the
Delta drowns them out.
The real test of
a heat sink is does it work or not? I did all of my testing using Windows 2000
Professional because of it's CPU idle feature Vs. the Win9x/ME versions. For a
CPU stress program I used distributed.net's rc5-64 client because it not only
stresses the CPU but I also didn't want to give up any key cracking time when I
didn't have too. The room temp was a constant 26°
C while measurements were taken. I used the on board CPU monitor of the KT7a to
measure temps. This consist of a thermal sensor in the middle of the socket
that rests on the bottom of the installed CPU. At idle the sensor reported a
very stable 32° C. This is impressive as I commonly hear of lesser heat sinks
running at 40° C and higher at idle with a similar CPU. The temp stabilized at
45°
C after running the RC5 client for around 10 minutes. Most people are not going
to use a computer in such a way that will keep high levels of stress on the
CPU. When I paused the RC5 client the temp started dropping fast and was within
1°
C of idle within 1 minute. The WBK38 (aka Wicked Badass Kooler 38 in the
Stampie household) really shined through in the stress test. I would have no
problem with recommending this heat sink to anyone that can stand the sound of
the fan.
Pros:
-
Great
kickass heat sink
-
Best 60mm Fan available
-
Very clean
design
Cons:
Rating: 9/10
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