|
Introduction:::...
When
I found out I was going to be looking at the CoolSonic
ICECUBE I naturally took a trip over to their
site to have a sniff round the pictures and see
what it was all about.
The
fact that it appears to be a German product gave the
impression, rightly or wrongly, that the engineering
standards were like to be high, but there was a niggling
doubt in my mind. The ICECUBE looks uncoventional.
It's relatively large, it uses the now proven heatpipe
technology and it relies on a side-mounted fan for
airflow. None of these factors should necessarily
impact on performance one way or the other, it's just
that so many times in the past I've seen such "inventive"
designs fail miserably at their primary function,
to cool your CPU.
Selling
for a shade over £22.00
including the dreaded VAT over at CCL Computers, the
ICEBERG rates as a budget/midange offering, though
it looks like it should be more expensive than it
is.
So
what are the Hamburg based CoolSonic offering us with
their ICECUBE cooler? well, this large copper/aluminium
hybrid claims a very low 21dBA volume level, all the
weight advantages of a part-aluminium construction,
all the thermal advantages of heatpipe assisted copper
and a class-leading price.
Sound
like a tall order? Did to me too! Let's take a flick
through the specs.
|
Dimensions:
Fan Dimensions:
Heatpipe Type:
Fan Type:
Voltage:
Wattage:
Fan Speed:
Airflow:
Sound Levels:
Lifetime:
|
91
x 83 x 93 mm
80 x 80 x 25 mm
2x Ø 6 mm
1 Ball Bearing / 1 Sleeve Bearing
12 V
1,8 W
2500 RPM
50,20 m³/h
21 dB(A)
50.000 Std.
|
I'm
sure most of you are fimiliar by now with how heatpipes
work. This isn't a fictional technology, heatpipes
are used in all manner of cooling solutions and can
even be found on the latest rash of high-end graphics
cards.
The
principle is actually quite simple. Liquid at the
"hot" end of the heatpipe boils as it absorbs
heat and the vapour then moves naturally towards the
cooler end of the pipe. As it travels, so it releases
its heat and turns back to a liquid again before being
drawn back to the hot end again by the capillary action
of an internal wick structure whereby it all happens
over again.
At
6mm the dual heatpipes in the ICECUBE are actually
quite large, but is bigger necessarily better?
Let's
take a closer look at the way this thing is put together:
|
