Are you looking to buy a new heatsink, but not willing to give $40-$50 for a high performance
heatsink? Well today we are going to take a look at a cheaper aluminum heatsink with a copper
core from Spire, the QuieTude IV for Pentium 4 systems. Check out this review to see how it
performs.
On the left you can see the retail box of this cooler. The other two pictures are of the box in
which I received the QuieTude IV cooler from Spire.
Here is a look at the HSF itself. A big aluminum heatsink, with a translucent blue fan on top.
It's nice that they gave the fan a cool designed fan grill.
Here are the specifications of this heatsink:
Socket
478 Cooling kit
Dimensions
Heat
sink :
90×78×47
mm (l × w × h)
12VDC
Fan :
70×70×25
mm
Bearing
Two
Ball bearing
Rated
speed
3600
RPM +/-10%
Rated
power
1.92
W
Noise
level
27.5
dBA
Air
flow
32.25CFM
at 3600RPM
Current
0.16
A
Life
hours
Two
Ball: 70.000
Features
Easy
install and remove system, Copper core, Design Fan Guard
Connector
3
Pin, mainboard
Application
Intel :
Pentium
4 ~ 3.2 GHz (Willamette / HT Northwood)
Celeron
~ 2.8 GHz (FC-PGA2)
Thermal
resistance
0.31
°C/W
Thermal
type
White
grease pre-applied
Clip
model
0606620
The fan has a 3-pin connector which allows you to monitor the RPM speed. Also nice is that Spire
has nicely sleeved this 3-pin wire. The retention system that Spire uses for this heatsink is a
very easy system, much much better than clips. All you need
to do to secure this heatsink is move the black lever from the one to the other side so that the
metal clamps slide into the retention system of your motherboard. Very easy, and not a pain in
the ass.
The QuieTuve IV is made out of aluminum, and in these pics you can see his aluminum fins. The
heatsink has a copper base in order to improve the heat conductivity from the CPU to the other
parts of the heatsink. This design is normally better than a complete aluminum design, but worse
than a full copper design, which is also more expensive to produce.
The QuieTude IV comes with a pre-applied thermal compound, which I have removed because I always
use Artic Ceramique to test CPU coolers. The third picture shows you the bottom. A mirror like
lapped base is always the best. How smaller the microscopic holes between the CPU and the
heatsink how better the heattransfer will be. The base of the QuieTude IV was a bit reflective,
but not as much as I have seen with the MCX159 Northbridge cooler from
Swiftech. So there is still some room for improvement on this point.
Also included in the box is a sample of Spire his own thermal compound.
The installation of this heatsink is not hard. Use the pre-applied thermal compound, or remove
this and use another thermal compound like the Artic Ceramique that I used. Then align the
heatsink with the Pentium 4 retention system on your motherboard and flip the black lever to the
other side. Then plug in the 3-pin fan connector and the installation is done!
Test System
CPU : Intel Pentium 4 2.8C (800MHz FSB)
Motherboard: AOpen AX4SG Max motherboard (Springdale 865G chipset)
Memory: 2x Corsair XMS3500C2 256MB RAM
Graphics card: MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200 with 128MB RAM
HDD: Maxtor 120GB SATA Hard Disk (6Y120M0)
Case: Antec PlusView 1000 AMG
PSU: Antec TrueControl 550W PSU
OS : Windows XP with SP1
A few small remarks about the testing procedure:
Stock/OC: First are the results with CPU on standard speed, 2.80GHz. Then we overclock the cpu to 3.30GHz by increasing the FSB from 200MHz to 236MHz. The CPU voltage was raised from 1.525V to 1.575V.
Idle/load: Idle conditions are measured after 15min idle in winXP after bootup, and load temperatures after 20min stress. With stress we mean Prime95 torture test along with Folding@home and a few normal applications.
Used thermal compound: Artic Ceramique.
Here are the test results. I have compared the Spire QuieTude IV against the Stock Intel cooler and the Spire CopperStream heatsink which was tested a few months ago.
The performance of this heatsink appears to be pretty good considering its low price. If you
take a look at the above graphs then please note the big difference in roomtemperature. This has
influenced the test results ofcourse. If you interpret these results with the raise above the
room temperature then the winner is the Spire CopperStream, followed by the QuieTude IV and the Stock Intel Cooler. The reason why the QuieTude IV scores better than the stock Intel cooler is because of the better heatsink design with the copper core, and because of a better fan. The full copper design of the CopperStream is still better than the Alu/Copper hybride QuieTude IV that's why the CopperStream scores better.
The name "QuieTude IV" is a bit a riddle, because it is not really that quiet. But I suppose they called it QuieTude IV because the previous two QuieTudes also have a copper base like the IV. The first QuieTudes were more silent though.
Overall this is a good budget cooler for Pentium 4 users who do not plan to do extreme overclocking.
Price is $19.95 over at 3D Cool.
The Good Stuff
- Relative good performance, performs better than the stock Intel cooler.
- Easy installation system
- Fan grill included
The Bad stuff, things that could be better
- Base could use some more lapping
- Relatively noisy.
DV Harware gives the Spire QuieTude IV cooler a 8/10
Added: December 24th 2003 Reviewer:LSDsmurf Score: 8/10 Related Link:Spire
