My new toys finally arrived - I say finally, because they were later than I expected.
I've come to the conclusion that you can't expect suppliers to get it right every time, but how they deal with any problems is the real measure of their real worth.

Having ordered the bits on a Wednesday, based on past performance I would have expected them to arrive on the Saturday, but by the following Tuesday they still hadn't arrived. My initial phone call didn't yield any results, but they did say they'd call me back. When they called me back a few minutes later, they admitted they didn't know why my order hadn't been processed, but apologised for the error & gave me the choice of having it sent out that day on a next day service, or a refund.

Still wanting the bits, it was happy-happy joy-joy here when a parcel arrived here the next day. So, overall, a to www.overclock.co.uk.






The Coolermaster Aero 7+ is very well equipped for a comparatively cheap heatsink: all copper construction with a good number of fine fins; an 80mm "hamster wheel" type fan with a 4pin Molex passthrough connector; a rheostat with a chromed plastic knob for controlling fan speed; a choice of pci slot backplate and aluminium 3.5" bay for fitting the rheostat; a separate fan speed sensing cable; and an aluminium case badge.
Not so good are the instructions, which have pictures but are still inadequate IMO, and the sachet of no-name thermal grease, which had begun separating.






On the base is a protective peel off film which comes off without leaving any residue ...





The clip not only uses all three knibs on the CPU socket, but is also pivoted to make installation easier ...





Closeups of the fins:








... & the fan:




Rated at 10-20 cfm (depending on the rheostat setting), it actually feels far more potent than that: the airflow is very well focussed. Unfortunately, the airflow is impressive only on less than half of the exhaust aperture, dropping off to a subjective half flow at the centre, and less than a quarter elsewhere.

As I won't be using the fan this isn't really an issue for me. Fitted though, the amount
of air coming out of each side of the heatsink seems about equal, so it looks like the gap between the fan & the heatsink fins is a big help in distributing the airflow.

I do have plans for the fan though ... with a bit of rewiring & some guards, it's likely to see service as a desk fan for the un-air conditioned summer months at work.




Moving on to the Coolermaster CRC-U01 Copper RAM chip coolers (to give them their full title), they feel a good weight, but I was a little disappointed with them. Despite being in a sealed package they showed quite a bit of oxidisation - I'd put this down to inadequate cleaning & finishing, or not enough care being taken in handling.
More seriously, the "thermal conductive 2 sided adhesive tape" looks like regular double sided tape to me, it's so thick my bet is that it'd be a really effective _insulator_.

This isn't a problem for me as I'm planning to use the ZENNZZO method of using tiny dabs of Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive, AS5 doing the bulk of the interfacing (is that a real word?).

A further whinge would be about the packaging: almost total destruction was required to liberate the sinks from its evil clutches.

I only need three of the sinks (cut in half) for my Mosfets, so unless I completely foul up 5 cutting attempts I'll have some left over - I've already earmarked 2 (or 3) for the mobo?s Southbridge chip







At this point it all started to go wrong - not only did all the pictures I took of the modified ramsinks & their installation (as well as the installation of the new heatsink) turn out to be badly lit and/or so blurred as to be totally unpublishable, my new temps are _worse_ than with the generic thermal grease & cheap HS I had before.

After initial installation, I booted up, checked in at PR & downloaded a few emails - after 5 minutes of that low CPU load, I checked the CPU temp: 41C
Leaving it alone for 5 minutes saw the temp drop to 38.5C ...
Playing a couple of mp3s saw it climb to 46C ...
Firing up folding@home for 15 minutes increased the temperature to 51.5C: 15.5 degrees higher than the temperature I was getting with the previous HS & grease.

Leaving the side panel of to ensure that completely fresh air was getting to the HS made no difference whatsoever, so I powered down & took the heatsink off to make sure it was in proper contact. It was - and my application technique proved to be good too - there was a perfectly rectangular, almost transparent residue of AS5 on the underside of the heatsink. A quick clean up, reapplication & reassembly yielded very similar temperatures.


ZENNZZO suggested over IM that it might take a few days for the AS5 to cure, & I should see what the temps were like over the next few days ... but an 8-16 degree increase in temps was unheard of. (Thanks to Duck & Kayin too, who said more or less the same thing).


The temps did improve after a while, but I've never seen temps as good as I had before.


On to the _other_ problem I was having - I have at least managed to define just what the problem is. This _should_ be the first step to a fix, but I've got to admit I'm pretty much stumped at the moment: rebooting, or turning the PC off, and then back on again after less than 5 hours adds 8C to the already poor temperatures.


Apparently, conventional wisdom about heatsinks & thermal grease (and possibly the laws of physics & thermodynamics) just don't apply to my rig, so the next time I have to do any dismantling (which will probably be pretty soon as my DVD drive has died, and the video card is threatening to do the same), I'm going to be very tempted to revert to the Q-Tec AMD "Noiseless" Cooler I had before, and use some of the "magic paste", as ZENNZZO has named my no-brand thermal grease.

It won't fix the reboot/restart temp gain problem, but the temps should be better to start with, so that additional 8C won't seem so bad. 36 + 8 = 44C is better than 51.5 + 8= 59.5C, after all.


Meanwhile, Lokie's Thermaltake Volcano 7+ (the fan of which made some very nasty noises a couple of times, prompting all this fiddling about in the first place) continues to do great service in its new home in my 800 Duron rig. With the fan set on low, with 100% load (f@h), with ambient temperatures up to 25C, it cools to a rock steady 34C

Nice work JE.

If i ever go water ill send ya my slk-900........if i ever. Hehe nice work anyway JE, and thats pretty ****ty you had so many problems.

wee part 2, Want to sell me that Aero fan

****ty luck dude. I don't know but I just haven't been a fan of Cooler Master heatsinks except the upcoming Hyper 6. I have a Silentboost K7 with the ducting mod and my idle is 30-31C in a cool room. Switching to a Tornado fan dropped the idle to 25C. I could go lower as I had a duct bringing in ambient air from outside the case, but it didn't fit with the sidepanel on.

On a sidenote I find the LANboy kind of cramped inside. I just put a system together and its beautiful looking with dual 12" UV cathodes and UV blue sleeving but it is cramped and that's with a 350W PSU (the cables are 36" =\)