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Introduction
It's been a while since I have tested a CPU fan, so here's hoping that things have changed from the old bog standard fan sat on a heatsink! Evercool have come up with their Buffalo Heatpipe CPU Cooler - it's available for both AMD and Intel.
At 500g the Buffalo weights alot more that my standard cpu cooler (the one that came with my cpu).
Specifications
Manufacturer: Evercool
Model No.: HPFA-10025 Buffalo
Materials: Aluminum fins, Copper heatpipes, aluminum and copper base
Fan Mfg: Evercool EC10025L12EA-N
Fan Spec: 1800PM (est.), 12V, 0.18A
Fan Dim: 25x100x100mm
Heatsink & Fan Dim: 128x110x71mm
Weight: 500 grams
Includes: AMD mounting clip
Compatible with Sockets: 754/939/940/AM2
Est. Pricing: $30USD ($33CDN)
Opening the Box
The box has the standard technical specs on the front and back of the packaging
Front of Box
Rear of Box
The cooler uses a heatpipe system to disapate heat to create it's cooling solution. There are 2 cooper heatpipes shaped to form a U - so the cpu block sits on the base of the U heatpipes. To aid in the cooling the heatpipes go up through 60 aluminium fins which are cooled by a 100mm fan which is suspended to the site of the cooler. The fan is held to the cooler via a simple wire bracket, and controlled via 3 pin connector.
Front fo Cooler
Rear of Cooler
The bottom of the cooler sits on the cpu via a solid copper base that connects to all the heatpipes
Cooler Base
InstallationThe last time I put a cooler in I had to remove my motherboard and unscrew loads of screws. Fitting the Buffalo was a breeze - simply remove your old cooler, by twisting the 4 connectors. I cleaned the cpu of a little, remove excess thermal compound, then put a pea size amount of the Buffalo thermal compound onto the cpu. Carefully I placed the Buffalo on the cpu - lining up the connectors to the holes on the motherboard. Once in place I simply tightened the connectors, plugged the 3 pin connector in and voila! Testing
I tested both coolers in a moderately warmed room, using Crysis benchmarks 800 x 600 (5 times each) - each test was conducted at idle speed (standard 2.13) and overclocked (2.80)
Results
Results from Testing
As you can see for the results the cooler performed very well, I'll explain my findings below.
Conclusion
Looking at the results it's easy to see the Buffalo out performs the stock cooler very easily, I'll put this down to the heatpipe design. The fins disapate the heat alot quicker because there are simply more of the them! The fan speeds are controlled by the motherboard, so it does get quieter when idle. Saying that my system is overclocked so the fan is running faster than normal, even being overclocked the fan is not the quietest, but it's not the loudest.
When I first installed this cpu the connector was 3 pin, rather than 4 pin so I plugged it into a 3pin header on my motherboard. After a little reading up I plugged it back into my 4pin fan header on my motherboard. It worked perfectly, and I could tell no difference - the performance was the same, so there was no need to re-do my tests again.
The cooler looks nice and the position of the fan is that the heat is blown away from the cooler rather than down onto it, and the cpu. Overall I would recommend this cooler, as it does what it says on the box!
Pros
Looks good
Very effective
Simple to fit
Cons
None
Thanks to Evercool for sending us the sample
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