Well, after playing with water cooling off and on for a couple years, I’ve finally gotten sick of it. I had a system that worked well for a while, but then my pump died. Good pumps are expensive, and the cooling system just seemed to be a sink for money. I decided to switch to air. I searched google for the best of the best of heatpiped heatsinks. I found most reviews rate the thermalright ultra 120 as one of the best. I noticed it would allow me to use my own 120mm fan, which I already had for my radiator, so I bought it. First off, this thing is BIG. Really big. Just look at it.

I didn’t think to take a pic of it, so I lifted this one from www.overclockersonline.net.

Either way, this beast looks impressive. So impressive in fact that I thought it might have similar performance to my water system. The sink is half the size of my radiator, and its directly connected to the cpu. Sounds like a good plan.

My dreams started getting crushed when I went to install this piece. According to the instructions it just bolted to the standard backplate that comes w/ ones motherboard. It definitly didn’t. The bolts supplied were far too short. In the end I had to use the backplate and nuts from my waterblock to get it installed. The stock Thermalright hardware also only allows for a top-to-bottom layout on 939 boards. I was under the impression I could have a front-to-back layout, so it would blow the hot air right out the back of the case. Overall not very impressed.

I finally managed to get the door on my case to shut (I had some clearance issues), and started doing some testing. The result? Absolutely terrible performance. I don’t know if water jaded me, or if this thing is just a POS. I get ~40c idle, and ~50c load on an A64 4000+ 939 San Diego core. Maybe I mounted it wrong? I remounted the sink 4 times trying both arctic silver 5 and the supplied compound, cleaning with alcohol in between. I still haven’t managed to get the temps down. I guess air cooling just isn’t that impressive.