Akasa Silver Mountain Review

Author : Joseph Leone Date : 15th November 2001

3DVelocity would like to thank Lapicon Electronics Ltd. for their help and courtesy in providing this cooler for review.

Introduction :

Akasa Corporation of Taiwan sent us an example of their new "Silver Mountain" CPU cooler. We'll be reviewing it's good and bad points, as well as testing it's performance with our exclusive test equipment. Under this new program, all the HSF units we obtain, however we obtain them, will be tested using our "test bench". If you'd like to see more about the test unit itself, and the reasoning behind our decision to embark on this course, you can read the entire article here. The bottom line is to obtain results that can be compared across the whole spectrum of available HSF units.

What you get :

Here's the way Akasa packages the Silver Mountain. The unit is totally surrounded by medium density polyethylene foam, and I wouldn't be surprised if this thing could ride for days in a UPS truck full of rocks. Of course, the box is the familiar black and yellow.

 

 

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First Impression:

Inside the box, the unit is packed with a small syringe of generic silicone thermal transfer compound. Akasa does not apply a thermal interface material to the heatsink, preferring to acknowledge that the people who buy this product are likely to remove it quite often. The syringe of silicone paste will probably allow more than a dozen applications.

 

 

 

Construction:

As you can see below, this unit is composed of a silver plated copper heatsink with about 216 pins. In theory, silver does have a higher heat transfer capability than copper does, but I can't help but question the logic of silver plating. Yes, the silver does transfer heat to the copper fast, and it transfers heat to the air fast. So, if the heatsink was pure silver, it would work better than copper. But, in this case, the heat has to travel through the copper, which is probably 99% of the mass. So, being the cynic that I am, I'd bet that this unit would perform just as well without the plating, and be several dollars cheaper. The weight, by the way is about 490 grams, well above AMD's published maximum of 300 grams. While I'd presume that the increased weight would probably be okay for a computer that never moves, I'd be hesitant to install this HSF into a box that travels to LAN parties.. The overall finish is clean and neat, with no burrs or nicks in any of the surfaces. The fins are spaced widely enough that airflow should be fairly good, and the 360 degree airflow should provide good turbulence..and turbulence is what keeps the air "scrubbing" the metal. That means less build-up of hot "boundary layer" air to insulate and impede heat transfer.

 

 

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Mounting:

This is the business end of a pretty generic clip system. It mounts and dismounts with average effort, and there's a small slot in the larger end of the clip that will accept a narrow screwdriver. With care, one can mount and dismount the unit without too much danger of a slipup that would damage the motherboard.

 

 

 

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Results and Opinions:

We're still compiling data for our test results chart, but as you can see below, the Akasa Silver Mountain scored impressively. It's heavy, although many units are heavier. It's well engineered and well constructed. It's a little bit noisy, although I've heard much worse. The generic clip works just as well as any of the others, but no better. What it does do better than others we've tested so far is move heat. It's the highest score we've come up with to date. With the price at about $45 retail, I think the customer is getting what he's paying for. I'd welcome the opportunity to test one of these without the silver plating. I think it would work just as well, and be $10 cheaper. But then again, "Copper Mountain" wouldn't have the same ring to it. In any case, because this unit performs well and is obviously well engineered and constructed, I'm giving it a rating of "8" on the 3DVelocity scale.

 

Note: All the units are tested the same way. 1500 grams of water at 80C are circulated through our testing apparatus, with the time and temperature drop monitored. We take the 10 minute period with the greatest temperature drop, and simply calculate the calories per hour and BTU per hour of heat transfer.

 

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