Socket-A Heat Sink Roundup

Date Reviewed: February 9, 2001
Reviewed By: Jason Rabel
Companies: Alpha, GlobalWinUSA, OCZ, TRIG, VantecUSA

TRIG T40-1 & T40-3:

TRIG is a company I have never heard of before, but they contacted me stating that they were interested in entering the overclocking market, and have two coolers they would like me to review. One thing I did notice when I went to their website was that the video cooler that they make is the one that was on my Creative Annihilator 2 (GF2GTS) video card! Anyway, they sent me two models, the T40-1 & T40-3, the only difference being that the T40-3 has a round copper base embedded in it. Upon first looking at these coolers, they appear well made, with no rough edges, however I was a little hesitant about the clip. When I went to actually install the coolers, they were very easy to install, I just used my needle-nose pliers to grip the little piece sticking out of the clip to mount & remove it. These coolers came stock with a thin (60mm x 10mm) ADDA fan rated at 21 CFM. In order to be fair I mounted a Delta fan (38CFM) on them and also recorded temperatures.

OCZ Monster 2 Standard:

OCZ has decided to take it upon themselves to try and build a better mousetrap... err.. cooler. They sent me several units for review, the first being the Monster 2 Standard. All the coolers are based upon the same heatsink and clip, but with different fan combinations. The heatsink is about one and a half times as wide as a normal heatsink, with a nice thick base to absorb the heat, however there are only 15 rows of fins to allow for heat dissipations. The clip's tension can be adjusted for Socket A or Socket 370 compatibility, and overall the clip was fairly user friendly. To unhook the clip from the socket required my needle-nose pliers, but it was still relatively easy and didn't have the death grip like the GlobalWin clip. The Monster 2 standard cooler flavor basically is a single delta fan mounted on the heatsink.

OCZ Twin Turbo Standard & Quiet:

The Twin Turbo Standard is a pair of Delta fans, whereas the quiet model is a pair of Sunon fans. The standard model is very loud with the pair of Deltas, but so much excess air is blowing on the motherboard that the voltage regulators were cool to the touch. I think the Sunons are rated around 23CFM each, and are very very quiet. After testing so many coolers with the Deltas, I was very happy to try out this silent jewl.

The Standard is on the left, Quiet on the right:

OCZ Quad Cool:

The OCZ Quad Cool uses the same familliar heatsink as the previous OCZ coolers, but they have managed to mount four 50mm fans rated at 20CFM each, stacked in pairs. I'm going to be honest with you, if you think a pair of Deltas would be loud and annoying, this cooler will drive you over the edge. The loud whine of the 4 fans, each slightly out of phase of the others just is not a good cooling solution in my opinion.

On To Page 4 For Temps & Conclusion