Heatsinks are getting bigger and bigger, but are they getting any better? Gigabyte and Cooler Master would have us believe so...
Gigabyte's G-Power BL
While the G-Power is far from the behemoth of some of today's heatsinks it's not small, it measures 110 x 100 x 109mm or a little over 10cm cube, that's quite a volume. There's not much copper in its construction (a little Nickel coating on its base plate), the rest is made from aluminium and yet it still weighs in at over 400g - some all copper heatsinks weigh more than twice this of course, but it's not an insignificant weight.
A quartet of heat-pipes connect the base to its aluminium fins in an impressive C shaped design. Active cooling comes courtesy of the 110mm fan atop the G-Power, thankfully Gigabyte used the ability to fit such a large fan on the heatsink as an opportunity to quieten things down - it runs at 2000RPM (or 1700 with a supplied resistor) and produces a little over 24dB(A) of noise (which will be barely audible in your average system).
Installation on a K8 (socket 939/754) AMD Athlon is as simple as we've experienced, a clip holds the heatsink on to the socket's bracket. Gigabyte supply a small tube of thermal paste to interface your CPU with the base of the G-Power, we found this to last for about three installations on an Ahtlon64. Also in the box you'll find the necessary bits to allow you to install the heatsink on to a Pentium 4 (socket T/478) or AMD's older socket A.
Gigabyte's G-Power BL
While the G-Power is far from the behemoth of some of today's heatsinks it's not small, it measures 110 x 100 x 109mm or a little over 10cm cube, that's quite a volume. There's not much copper in its construction (a little Nickel coating on its base plate), the rest is made from aluminium and yet it still weighs in at over 400g - some all copper heatsinks weigh more than twice this of course, but it's not an insignificant weight.
A quartet of heat-pipes connect the base to its aluminium fins in an impressive C shaped design. Active cooling comes courtesy of the 110mm fan atop the G-Power, thankfully Gigabyte used the ability to fit such a large fan on the heatsink as an opportunity to quieten things down - it runs at 2000RPM (or 1700 with a supplied resistor) and produces a little over 24dB(A) of noise (which will be barely audible in your average system).
Installation on a K8 (socket 939/754) AMD Athlon is as simple as we've experienced, a clip holds the heatsink on to the socket's bracket. Gigabyte supply a small tube of thermal paste to interface your CPU with the base of the G-Power, we found this to last for about three installations on an Ahtlon64. Also in the box you'll find the necessary bits to allow you to install the heatsink on to a Pentium 4 (socket T/478) or AMD's older socket A.
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