Introduction

For anyone into overclocking, as well as PC aficionados, the heat sink is the first place they look in order to keep their processor cooler. Over time we've seen hundreds of different coolers, and 99% of them so far have all been made out of aluminum. Which has worked VERY well so far. Aluminum is a good metal for cooling, its lighter, it transfers heat well, and is cheap. Sounds like you get all you want from aluminum, right?

Wrong.

Yes, aluminum is a good metal for it, for all the reasons I just mentioned. However, while it transfers heat well, it's NOT the best. In recent times, more manufactures have been looking to alternative metals for their coolers, most notably copper. Copper is a really nice metal for heatsinks, too. It offers better thermal conductivity than aluminum, which means that it can cool better, which is what we really want. However, it's got a couple of tiny pitfalls. One of them is that it's a LOT heavier than aluminum, so an identical cooler made from copper will be a LOT heavier than the aluminum, and its also somewhat more expensive. Vantec's newest heat sink hopes to combine the best of both worlds with their newest cooler the 6035D that is an Aluminum/Copper combo heat sink.

Packaging/Construction

Vantec uses virtually identical packaging for all their coolers now. All their heat sinks come packaged in a small blue box with the company logo on it, also adorning a small sticker with the model of the heat sink. Yeah, this is a plain and simple packaging, but it works, a heat sink doesn't need that much of a box! However, Vantec does throw a couple extra goodies into the mix for added touch. Inside the box with the cooler is a small blister pack of silicone thermal grease as well as a 3 to 4 pin power adapter for the fan, as the delta fan it includes has a really nasty habit of burning out motherboard headers. (In plain English: USE THE ADAPTER WITH IT!)

The 6035D has a construction type I hadn't seen before in a heat sink. It uses a copper base, with thin copper fins soldered in some fashion onto the base, much like a lot of other heat sinks do. However, rather than leave it at that, they put a large aluminum housing over the fins and base. This is a really unconventional thing to do, but it did accomplish some good things, with the biggest being protecting the delicate copper fins. Other advantages include, a stable and flat base to install the fan onto, rather than securing it between fins like so many other sinks do. This is a pretty good set of advantages there; however a possible downside I see is that it could possibly hurt the temperatures by preventing more airflow across the copper fins. On the other hand that's just speculation and not fact, so I'll say that's a bonus in construction for now. The

Design/Construction: 2/2

Installation

Recently I had tested a different Vantec Heat sink, the 62540D aluminum design, and I fell in love with it, despite the fact it wasn't the best cooler I own. Why you ask? Simple, it was SO damned easy to put on the CPU. The clip on it was so nice and I felt extremely comfortable using it on my CPU, I didn't feel my CPU was in danger at all. The clip was just that incredibly comfortable for me to use. So because of that I was looking forward to the 6035 having the same clip. It doesn't have the same one.

However, not to be let down by something trivial like that, I pressed onwards. The first thing I really noticed about the heat sink, is that is freaking heavy. It's the second heaviest one I've ever tested, and it's notably heavier than a Thermoengine. It comes in at a weight of about 13.5 ounces with the delta fan installed on it. So for some of you, a shim may be in order to help support the weight some. I did not use one during testing, but for something of this mass I wouldn't be ashamed to use one. But, since I'm generally certifiable and the like, I went ahead and put it on. For the install directly, I wasn't enthused, or seriously irked by it either way. The install was pretty easy based on some heat sinks I've tested (*cough*Thermoengine*cough*), but it was nowhere near as friendly as the older Vantec. There were only 2 things that really bugged me about this thing during install; the first one I ran into was the clip falling inside the heat sink housing. If you're not careful the top half of it will go inside the housing and can sometimes be a pest to get back out. The second being the 'locking' portion of the clip, after you get the clip onto the lug, you're supposed to push it into the sink, folding it down locking it in place better. It's all well and good, unless when you're trying to attach it and you accidentally push it in (which it isn't that hard to mistakenly do.) So those were some downfalls to the new clip.

Installation: 1.5/3

Cooling Performance

Ok, so how a heat sink is made and how easy it is to put in is just the details, the meat of the meal is in how the thing works, so lets find out how well this thing cools off your Tbird buddy.

The Test

Run the system after a normal boot for a while, and get idle temps. Then see how well it keeps the numbers down by kicking in Prime95 and burning those CPU cycles. The probe on the motherboard reports temps in motherboard monitor.

The Testbed

Blizzard 280 Case
Asus A7V Motherboard v1.004c
Tbird 800 @ 1GHz 1.85v
Arctic Silver 1

The Candidates

Vantec 6035D Copper/Aluminum heatsink
Vantec 62540D Aluminum heatsink | Our Review
Thermosonic Thermoengine Aluminum heatsink | Our Review

So now that all the parties are in, and the gauntlet has been thrown down, lets go see what these bad boys do to each other.

The first sink I threw into the mix was the previous Vantec I tested, the 62450D. I expected this guy to get the lowest numbers of the 3. Then came the new guy, the Vantec 6035D, followed up by the old standby - the Thermoengine. Here's how the numbers looked for it:

Idle   Test #1 Test #2 Test #3 Vantec Aluminum 42 C 30 C 24.9 C Vantec Copper 41 C 30 C 24.7 C Thermoengine 41 C 31 C 25.0 C

Load   Test #1 Test #2 Test #3 Vantec Aluminum 46 C 31 C 24.9 C Vantec Copper 44 C 30 C 24.8 C Thermoengine 44 C 32 C 25.0 C

So, the final results? The new Vantec cooler went nose to nose with the Thermoengine and stood its ground. Pretty impressive stuff in general, considering the fact the Thermoengine has been the top contender for a long time. One thing I'll throw in as a bonus half point here for the Vantec, even though I installed it 6 or 8 times, it never did anything to hurt my core, unlike the Thermoengine, where during one of my several rounds of testing, I chipped my core with it. I wasn't happy about that.

Cooling: 4.5/5

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Copper base for great cooling
• Aluminum housing protects delicate fins
• Solid fan mount position
• Goes toe to toe with the Thermoengine

Cons

• Heavy as hell
• Different clip than previous model

Conclusion

Well, I'd have to say the 6035D stood its ground well. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from it when I first got it, as the design was something I had never seen before. Now that I've done some testing on it, I'm more than happy with its performance. The fact it stood toe to toe with the Thermoengine (the best heat sink I own,) made me quite happy with it. There were a couple quirks with it, but nothing too incredibly bad about it.

The 6035D has a pricing level that is very similar to a Thermoengine with a delta on it, so as far as which to buy, I don't see any issues with picking this one over the competition. On the other hand, the 62540D is half the price and isn't that far off still. Sometimes pricing can be tricky like that.

As far as noise, you can't win here. All 3 candidates used the delta fan, A.K.A. you're not going to sleep much with me on.

Installation on the old Vantec was the easiest of the 3, with the new Vantec coming in pretty close behind it. The Thermoengine was way the heck in back; it didn't get the nick 'Core Killer' for nothing, apparently.

Overall value is kinda a tough call now. The 62540D is still a great pricing deal, however, I see the design maxing out in terms of cooling soon, whereas the Thermoengine and 6035 have more headroom to grow. At this point in time I'd have to give the edge to those coolers for overall value.

Rating: 8/10 SystemLogistics

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