Battle of the CPU Coolers - March 2008

Review Pages

1. Coolermaster Hyper 212
2. CooLink Silentator
3. Evercool Buffalo
4. Evercool PT12-9525EA
5. GlacialTech Igloo 5750 Silent & PWM
6. Noctua NH-U12P
7. Spire Fourier - SP602B3
8. Spire Starflow SP519S7
9. Thermalright SI-128SE
10. Test Methodology
11. Benchmarks - Idle Results
12. Benchmarks - Load Results
13. Benchmarks - Noise levels
14. Conclusion

Manufacturer	Spire
Model	Fourier - SP602B3
Price	$40
Category	Power Users

Spire newest thermal product comes with the legendary name ''Fourier '' . ''The name speaks for itself; the Fourier stemming from the Law of Heat conduction, brings a unique design and silent cooling to another level," Spire claims.

An aluminum stacked micro-fin heat-sink design with massive copper base. This Spire signature clear fan promises to offer the ultimate in cooling with the sheer quietness.

- Features

* 4 Thermally improved copper Heat Pipes
* Aluminum Micro-Fin with Massive copper-base
* 12cm ClearFan, providing a whopping 52.2 CFM
* 16.0 dBA : Silent!
* Sleek innovative design
* Universal Clip for 775 and AM2/K8 sockets
* Fits all the latest micro-processors on the market

- Specifications

Dimensions

Heat sink :	136×125×103 mm (l × w × h)
12VDC Fan :	120×120×25 mm

Bearing

Ball bearing

Rated speed

1500 RPM +/-10%

Rated power

3.0 W

Noise level

16.0 dBA

Air flow

52.05 CFM at 1,500 RPM +/-%

Current

0.25 A

Life hours

Ball: 50.000

Features

4 Copper Heat Pipes, Aluminum Micro-Fin,
Copper base

Connector

3 pin, mainboard

Application

Intel :	Celeron D ~ 3.2 GHz
	Celeron D ~ 2.93 GHz (340J)
Intel :	Core 2 Duo ~ 3 GHz (775 Dual-core)
Intel :	Core 2 Quad ~ 2.66 GHz (775 Quad-core)
	Core Duo ~ 2.33 GHz (775 Dual-core)
	Pentium 4 ~ 3.73 GHz (775 Prescott)
	Pentium D ~ 3.4 GHz (775 Dual-Core)
	Pentium EE ~ 3.73 GHz (775 Dual-Core)
AMD :	Athlon 64 ~ 5200+ (K8)
	Athlon 64 FX-51 (K8)
	Athlon 64 FX-53 (K8)
	Athlon 64 FX-55 (K8)
	Athlon 64 FX-60 (K8)
	Athlon 64 X2 ~ 6400 GHz (AM2)
	Opteron ~ 2.6 (K8)
	Sempron ~ 3300+ (K8)
AM2 :	Athlon X2 ~ 6400 GHz (AM2)

Thermal resistance

0.24 °C/W

Thermal type

Stars-420 white grease(Injection Tube,0.5g)

*All Spire CPU cooling products come with thermal compound either pre-applied onto the cooler or in an injection tube. Compound will begin to function at its optimum potential, after a gradual increase in heat-dissipation, approximately 168 hours (7days) after initial application.

- Retail package

The retail package of Spire Fourier Noctua SP602B3 is big enough to make you wonder what exactly is placed inside at the box.

Opening the box unveils just the various installation bases for all kinds of cpu processors :)

Getting familiar with the Spire fourier cooler, we can see a massive 120mm rotating fan at the top

While there are four full copper heatpipes coming from the base to the aluminum fins

The base is made out of full copper with excellent finish..

- Installation

While in the beginning we tried to get everything together, something didn't work exactly as we hoped. The design of the cooler itself does not allow for an easy installation for two main reasons. The pre-assembled mounting screws are very hard to be rotated without the included tool. That means it takes much time to rotate the screws and if your motherboard has a big cooling system, then you are out of luck.

The second reason is that the design of the heatpipes will mostly interfere with the existing motherboard cooling system in a way that you will need to apply extra pressure to get everything together.

The following pictures illustrate the mounting problem we had with this cpu cooler:

We had to apply force in order to get the Spire Fourier base to conact the processor. No matter if we rotated the cpu cooler, the problems remained the same:

After several attempts, we got everything installed, even we weren't very sure about the performance of the cpu cooler since the base was not firmly attached on the cpu.