I have seen a lot of different cooler designs lately and I like the idea that many companies are coming up with. They are using large low RPM fans that cut noise and do not hinder performance. This is smart for a few reasons. People like me are getting tired of loud computers. Yeah it was cool a few years ago to yell over your LAN box to your friend next to you, but I am getting tired of my computer sounding like a hair dryer. Today I am going to look at a solution for this problem.  I am looking at the Spire part number (5F271B1M3 FalconRock).

• AMD Athlon XP 2000+
• ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
• 512Mn PC3200 (2X256)
• Aluminum case w/ 3 case fans

When I first opened the box to this cooler, I said to myself "WOW that's a big cooler!" I'm not kidding folks this cooler is large, measuring in at 80X80X44 and that's just the heat sink. On top of that is an 80X80X25 case fan keeping it cool. This heat sink is an aluminum heat sink with a copper core which in my opinion makes for a great heat sink. Copper pulls heat away from the CPU fast but it doesn't dissipate it very well while aluminum dissipates heat quickly, but it doesn't pull it away fast enough.  So, if you add these together like a lot of heat sink manufacturers do, you have the best of both worlds.  The second benefit is that aluminum is a lot cheaper so it brings the cost of the heat sink down. I did see a few things right off hand though that I didn't like. The first problem I had, was that I believe this heat sink was to big to only have a single pronged clip.  A heat sink of this size should definitely have a 3 prong clip.  The other problem I noticed were some small dings and scratches on the bottom of the heat sink.  These blemishes were not near the contact area for the CPU core, however, some heat sinks may need to be lapped. Well, lets get to testing and see if these down sides have any affect on the performance of this giant cooler.

If you look above at the first picture, you can see the blemishes I mentioned above. Before I started testing, I removed the factory heat sink compound and applied some Shin-EtsMicroSi compound. Even though this may not be the best compound in the world, it is really easy to clean up and works well.

The installation of the cooler was very easy even though I was afraid of the single prong retainer. I would be careful attaching the retainer, it has a lot of pressure behind it and you can crush your Athlons core very easily. As soon as I fired the system up I was blown away with how quiet the system was. It was nice to hear myself think when I'm fragin with my speakers cranked :-). The heat sink performed great. I am testing it against the spire part number (5R265B1H3 SkiveStream) and the Dynatron DC1206BM. check out the temperatures below.

I was very happy with the performance of this cooler. I am sure that with better heat sink compound my system would run even cooler.

After I finished testing, I wanted to have some fun with this cooler, so I removed the aluminum fan that the cooler came with and attached an Antec Blue LED fan to it and I think it looks great. All the testing was done with the stock fan and other then the Antec making a little more noise the cooling results where the same.