Conroe heatsink group test

Testing rig

To set our heatsinks, we set up a rig with a Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (one of the hottest chips on the market!); ASUS P5WD2E-Premium; 1GB Corsair XMS 2-8500; NVIDIA 7800 GTX graphics. We put thermal probes on four key places - the heatsink itself, the motherboard chipset, the intake fan and the exhaust.

Conclusions

In terms of price and performance, it's really hard to beat the Arctic Cooling Freezer. It's relatively easy to install, keeps your CPU the coolest of the bunch and will also be nice and quiet. Special mentions to Alphacool Passiv, which is just a totally mental design, and the Akasa AK-960 which almost manages to pip the Freezer to the post. Either of those heatsinks will keep your Conroe nice and chilly, and not at an outrageous price.