Today we got our hands on Spire coolers newest heatsink for the socket A platform....the Verticool. This is Spire coolers first trip out into the world of heatpipes on your heatsink and l have to say that right out of the box this is one impressive looking device. It has a dual heatpipe design and, as you can probably guess from the name, is tower based. This makes for one big, scary looking heatsink.
Of course it comes with an 80 mm fan and an aluminium fan grill to give it that little extra eye candy but honestly, when l first saw the Verticool, l didn’t think there was any way this was going to mount without ripping the socket right off the motherboard. This was due in part to the fact that Spire coolers decided to go with 3 pronged mounting clips. Similar designs tend to mount directly to the motherboard (which of course means you have to take the motherboard out in order to mount a heatsink which is a real pain in the neck!) Thankfully, Spire coolers took my worries into account when designing the Verticool. Believe it or not, it weighs in at an acceptable 333g which is within acceptable weight limits.
To give you an idea of the size of the Verticool, here it is beside Spirecooler’s Skivestream III. As you can see by the size difference, 333g is not bad at all. Actually, most of the weight in this heatsink comes from the copper base. Thanks to some clever engineering, most of the heatsink is made out of aluminium to keep the weight down. Now come the specs directly from the Spirecooler website:
Specifications:
Socket A Cooling kit
Dimensions Heat sink : 80×64×90 mm (l × w × h)
12VDC Fan : 80×80×25 mm
Bearing: Ball bearing
Rated speed: 2300 RPM +/-10%
Rated power: 0.96 W
Noise level: 25.0 dBA
Air flow: 28.0 CFM at 2,300 RPM
Current: 0.08 A
Life hours: Ball: 50.000
Features: Dual heatpipe cooler, copper base, tool-free installation
Connecto:r 3 pin mainboard
Application: AMD : Athlon ~ 1.4 GHz (Thunderbird)
Athlon MP ~ 2800+ (Thoroughbred)
Athlon XP ~ 3400+ (Barton)
Athlon XP ~ 2100+ (Palomino)
Athlon XP ~ 2700+ (Thoroughbred)
Duron ~ 1.8 GHz (Morgan)
Sempron ~ 2800+ (K7)
These specs were a bit of a headscratcher for me at first. The fan only runs at 2300 RPM compared to the Skivestream III’s 3600 RPM. It looked as if airflow was sacrificed for the noise level. I would have assumed the bigger the fan on this product the better but in the end the big question comes down to whether or not heatpipes make the difference and the only way to find that out is by installing it.
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