Introduction

In the past few years, heatsinks have gone from relatively obscure devices mounted on processors with the sole purpose of moving heat away from the processor core to something more of a techie's craze. They attracted very little attention and very little care because no one needed all that good cooling to help keep a Pentium I or even a Pentium II stable. But with the advent of the Pentium III/AMD generation, heatsinks have risen in both popularity and necessity. With processors throwing off so much heat, a fan is not only convenient, but required. With today's processors, a fan is required and a bigger fan is convenient. Sooner or later we will hit the stages where every processor will need exotic cooling since every generation of processor architectures, so far, have meant more heat needed to be thrown off. If you're a computer nut or just someone who builds systems, you will probably have noticed that there are an abundance of heatsinks to choose from in all shapes and sizes that perform relatively the same except for the few overachievers that are excellent in both design and capability. The great thing about this industry is that there is no single company dominating the market such as NVIDIA or Microsoft, etc… The market for heatsinks is a market for innovation and design, there are so many different ways to make a good HSF and so many ways to make it even better. All a company needs is a good idea and good resources to make a winning product. Today we look at a HSF from a company that was relatively obscure a few months ago. Thermosonic (Here) was established last year and is a relatively new company based in Taiwan. In fact, their first product is the Thermoengine. I'm sure this probably isn't the first review you've read on this good looking unit, but it probably wont be a last as there are quite a few different combinations and revisions made on this unit.

The Thermoengine

The design of the Thermoengine is unique to say the least. Of all of the heatsinks available today, it is the most attractive while being the most intriguing. As you can see in the pictures, the fins on the thermoengine don't go one way, they lead out away from the core of the heatsink to the outer edges. I'm guessing this is a design trick that'll help the distribution of heat but only testing will help us find out. The "core" of the heatsink runs from the top right down to the contact area for the CPU where there is a stock TIM (Thermal Interface Material). At first glance, there seems to be a good amount of surface area on the serrated fin design. The V60-4210 comes with a stock 60x60x10mm fan moving only 19.8CFM at it's best. But at around 30db, it's a great fan for people who like quiet while they're working. The fan intakes air into the heatsink so it may be a bit louder although more effective.

Going back to the actual heatsink, the typically low-density aluminum makes it moderately light although it's a feather compared to some of the copper heatsinks lying around here. Thermosonic has done an amazing job casting, machining, and assembling the heatsink: there are holes drilled for the screws, everything fits right, feels solid, and it's just well constructed and it's obvious by how it looks. The design of the heatsink is very attractive, especially if you can find one of the anodized ones in 5 great colors. As the most popular well-rounded and available heatsink out today, it's been in good demand and also in good combinations with various Delta, Panaflo, Global Win, and etc fans.

Looking at the Interface material on the Thermoengine (there's some preapplied goop on the bottom of the heatsink that is described by Thermosonic as "phase correcting material" which basically means it heats up to conform to the best parameters of contact) we realize that there is a very thick amount of it and that it's supposed to even out when it's heated up. From my experience, a thick layer of thermal compound is never a good thing because it's just required to fill in the gaps and imperfections between the two surfaces: making it thick won't actually benefit it. To see if the TIM would even itself out with heat as it's supposed to. We put the processor on a Pentium III 800e at 1GHz and let it sit there for a while under full load. A couple of hours later, when we pulled the Thermoengine off, we were surprised to see that the TIM had evened itself out due to the pressure and the heat and made good contact with the CPU, not too much and not too little. So in our tests below, we used the base TIM instead of something fancy.

Thermoengine History

In the past couple of months, there has been a controversy regarding the Thermoengine and it's construction. Seemingly a few months back, there have been a barrage of reviews on the Thermoengine "I" as I like to call it. The original had a hollow core, brought into the open by such sites as HardOCP calling it the "heat pipe" and it had a lot of people talking. Since then, Thermosonic has quietly modified the design of the Thermoengine but this time with a solid core instead of a hollow core. This generated some rumors and some anger directed towards Thermosonic because they seemingly fooled the public by selling them different Thermoengines than the ones that were reviewed. As a note, according to some performance tests by the HardOCP, the solid core Thermoengines did not perform up to par with the older, hollow core Thermoengines. The HSF we have today in the labs is the hollow core Thermoengine.

If you would like more information on the supposed heat pipe in the Thermoengine and see pictures of one cut straight down the middle, check this out for more info

Installation

Let's start with the clips. The Thermoengine has a moderately easy installation process of any heatsink I've used and it's virtually dummy proof. It's very easy to put on and take off (with a flat-head screwdriver). Putting on the heatsink isn't a problem at all but I've found that it is EXTREMELY difficult to take off with your hands and you need to resort to a flat head to remove it easily and properly. The heatsink is rated for both Intel and AMD processors and they work extremely well for both. Taking off and putting on the Thermoengine isn't tedious at all and really is no hassle. The slot in the clip for the flat head is also a really good touch to make it even easier to take off with a flat head.

Benchmarks And Performance

The performance of the Thermoengine in my experience is largely dependent on the type of fan that is mounted on it. Although the heatsink alone does a good job of cooling, it is nothing exceptional and noteworthy. A few months ago, the Thermoengine would have dominated the market because it's performance is on par with the old king Alpha Novatech but today, with the outrageous Copper Coolers and new dynamic cooling solutions, it's just not up there anymore. It's safe to say that as long as you're not using the stock fan on the Thermoengine, you should see better-than-average results in your overclocking and computing experience. Today, we will examine the Thermoengine with both the stock fan and the new Global Win 7k RPM fan.

Testing will be done a Asus CUSL2 with a Thermister in the CPU socket under the processor for accurate measurements running a Pentium III 800e at 1GHz at 1.85v. The room temperature was at 75 degrees and the ambient temperature in the case at idle was 85 degrees. The heatsink will be run and temperatures measured under idle and load while the ambient temperature of the case will be continuously measured.

Benchmark System And Notes

• Intel Pentium III 800e
• Asus CUSL2
• 256MB PC133 SDRAM
• Standard TIM used, standard fan and upgraded fan used
• Alphs PEP66 used as comparison

Testing Notes

1) Idle - Let computer boot up, wait an hour without doing anything (go to Wendy's), come back and check temp.
2) Load - Run Prime95 and/or Sandra CPU Burn-In Wizard for an hour (go to Wendy's) and check temperature
3) Ambient - Room temperature
3) Motherboard monitor used to measure temperature in Celsius (sorry, I hate it too)

Thermoengine (stock) - Idle 40C
Thermoengine (7K) - Idle 38C
Thermoengine (stock) - Load 54C
Thermoengine (7K) - Load 50C)
Alpha PEP66 - Idle 39C
Alpha PEP66 - Load 52C

The Thermoengine in its base configuration is comparable to the Alpha PEP66, this was a big surprise to me as I thought it would have needed the benefit of more cooling to compete with the big boys. I guess design won out in that aspect. But as you could see, the bigger fan helped a lot in cooling down the massive heatsink, an admirable 4 degrees in load and 2 degrees in idle. Very impressive numbers for a newcomer to the heatsink market. The only disadvantage in using the big fan is the noise. At 7,000 RPM, the Global Win fan is a real headache inducer. It was effectively louder than all my other fans combined. If you could withstand using such a loud fan or have a voltage regulator, by all means go for the big fan.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Cheap
• Installation is easy
• Cooling is upper-par

Cons

• Hard to unclip

Conclusion

Rating: 9/10 SystemLogistics

Re-Printed From SLCentral

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