Testing
To test the three heatsinks we fitted it to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with MSI's K8N Neo Platinum motherboard in Cooler Master's Praetorian 731. The testing procedure we used is well documented in our previous reviews, and if you want to know a little about the way we extracted load temperatures from temperatures we measured there's a little physics involved. For comparison we tested against a stock cooler:
Final load temperatures are shown on the right hand side of the graph; surprisingly the lightest and quietest offering, Gigabyte's G-Power, performed significantly better than both of Cooler Master's heatsinks. The G-Power comes with an inline resistor to reduce its fan speed by 15%, it wasn't found to make much difference the final load temperature we measured or to the noise output of the fan - it was already one of the quietest components in our typical test system.
As its size would lead you to expect, Cooler Master's Hyper 6+ performed admirably. Sadly our motherboard's lack of four pin fan headers prevented testing the heatsink with the fan running at anything but full speed so it wasn't nearly as quiet as Gigabyte's G-Power.
Cooler Master's second heatsink, the Vortex TX, didn't perform nearly as well. After measuring the results above we were worried something was wrong with the installation of the Vortex; we removed it to discover that the centre of its base wasn't making contact properly with our CPU - it was slightly concaved in shaped. Adding more thermal paste to fill this gap didn't make much difference, it seems poor quality control on the flatness of the heatsink's base is to blame for its poor performance.
Final Words.
The two Cooler Master heatsinks we've looked at in this review leave a lot to be desired. The Hyper 6+ may perform well, but it's at a huge weight/size cost. Both heatsinks are noisy when compared to the competition and clumsy to install.
By comparison Gigabyte's G-Power is a wonder; reasonably sized and not too heavy, it has the best performance, is the easiest to install and comes with is the only heatsink of the three which is supplied with a re-usable tube of thermal paste. Far and away the best heatsink on test here today.
Gigabyte's G-Power
To test the three heatsinks we fitted it to an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with MSI's K8N Neo Platinum motherboard in Cooler Master's Praetorian 731. The testing procedure we used is well documented in our previous reviews, and if you want to know a little about the way we extracted load temperatures from temperatures we measured there's a little physics involved. For comparison we tested against a stock cooler:
Final load temperatures are shown on the right hand side of the graph; surprisingly the lightest and quietest offering, Gigabyte's G-Power, performed significantly better than both of Cooler Master's heatsinks. The G-Power comes with an inline resistor to reduce its fan speed by 15%, it wasn't found to make much difference the final load temperature we measured or to the noise output of the fan - it was already one of the quietest components in our typical test system.
As its size would lead you to expect, Cooler Master's Hyper 6+ performed admirably. Sadly our motherboard's lack of four pin fan headers prevented testing the heatsink with the fan running at anything but full speed so it wasn't nearly as quiet as Gigabyte's G-Power.
Cooler Master's second heatsink, the Vortex TX, didn't perform nearly as well. After measuring the results above we were worried something was wrong with the installation of the Vortex; we removed it to discover that the centre of its base wasn't making contact properly with our CPU - it was slightly concaved in shaped. Adding more thermal paste to fill this gap didn't make much difference, it seems poor quality control on the flatness of the heatsink's base is to blame for its poor performance.
Final Words.
The two Cooler Master heatsinks we've looked at in this review leave a lot to be desired. The Hyper 6+ may perform well, but it's at a huge weight/size cost. Both heatsinks are noisy when compared to the competition and clumsy to install.
By comparison Gigabyte's G-Power is a wonder; reasonably sized and not too heavy, it has the best performance, is the easiest to install and comes with is the only heatsink of the three which is supplied with a re-usable tube of thermal paste. Far and away the best heatsink on test here today.
Gigabyte's G-Power
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October 14 2021 | 15:04
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