Thermalright HR-01 X Server Heatsink

Heatsink Comparison (cont):

The Thermalright heatsink doesn't weight quite as much as the Intel retail heatsink, however the weight for the retail heatsink includes the fan and bracket. If you take the full weight of the Thermalright heatsink + retention mechanism + 120mm fan it comes in closer to 800g. With the Thermalright, only the base is (nickel plated) copper while the fins are aluminum, providing a balance of performance and weight.

To test the HR-01 X, I used three different 120mm fans providing three different levels of airflow (and noise). The fans rated for 17 dBA & 26 dBA are extremely silent and only produce a low hum. The fans at 33 dBA are reasonable but still a little too noisy for my application. Obviously the retail heatsink at a blaring 53 dBA is unacceptable, they sound like a pair of hair dryers!

System Setup:

The system setup for the test is pretty straight forward. Keep in mind too that these are "low voltage" Xeons, which are only 50W TDP, versus the normal models which would be 80W. Temperatures were read using hwmonitor, and the ambient temperature was monitored with a Fieldpiece temperature probe. Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound was used, and allowed at least a full week to cure for each of the heatsinks.