Product: SK-6

Manufacturer: ThermalRight

Homepage : www.thermalright.com

Tragedy has struck the Chillblast camp. We have suffered a crushing court defeat at the hands of the review monkey. The judge has ruled that we are guilty of the alleged libel and ordered us to pay damages in the order of £734,000. If this wasn't bad enough, the little victor has put in costs of another £130,000. Coupled with our own burden owed to Beaver&Beaver we now owe a little over a cool million. DOH! I have already sent the rest of the crew out to make some quick cash, so if you see a few lonely looking people on a street corner, chance your hand cause it could be one of them and I've told them no price is too low.

I have excluded myself from the hands on activities by graciously offering to take care of the reviews. It is with great pleasure that I can reveal the Thermalright SK-06 as our latest entry into the assault course that is the Chillblast test zone/dungeon. Thermalright is a little known company that specializes in producing a small range of high quality heatsinks that are suitable for a wide number of users. They have sent us their latest heatsink, the SK-06 which is a sexy looking little copper number. Here is an excerpt from the mail they sent us:

"The base is still machine cut, but the performance in not affected. The only difference in the mass production unit is the base surface will be sandblasted. We'll start to ship next week anyway even though machine cut is very costly. Commitment to customers is more important I think"

I like their attitude, they are putting the customer before profit and as we all know the customer is king. They are in a burgeoning market and will need to rely on not only the quality of their product to survive but also the whole package. On this little extract we can see that their future is already looking bright. Yes, I have got my shades on.

The unit is a stunner. I know I seem to say this more often these days but it is true. That or you could keep me amused with a shiny coin (I heard that). The heatsink is made entirely from copper and each of its numerous fins are soldered onto the base to ensure effective contact. The fins themselves are extremely fine and therefore prone to being bent by any simpleton trying to force a Delta on top. The flipside of this is there is a larger surface area for the air to move across and so dissipate the heat more effectively. The unit came with a thermal pad, wire to attach the fan with and a standard clip. We opted for the enemy of all eardrums, the Delta 7,200 rpm beast as this is clearly a performance 'sink and accordingly needs a top fan.

Here is how it looks with that bad boy strapped on.

Mmmmmmmshiny. It looks the business. The heatsink has a sort of W look about it with the edges raised above the main body of fins. Explained badly? No change there then.

If the Swiftech is a QA's nightmare then this puppy is his Freddy Kreuger. Each fin is separate and interleaves with the next to create stability. There is a lot of room for error but this unit was perfect.

Here's the base, it does still need a bit of work done to it.

Mandatory comparative shots with the crowd favourite the Coolermaster EP5-6I11.

The sink is much smaller with finer fins than the Coolermaster but remember these are in different categories and only here to give you a visual comparison.

Test Rig

This PC is the same one used for all our cooler reviews.

Our highly scientific approach has been compromised by a small number of factors. Chiefly that we don't have a scientific approach. This means that our aim is to provide a real world test, i.e. to simulate the experience that you would have if you had bought this heatsink. Therefore, we will take measurements from the onboard temp gauge under the CPU and decibel readings but not under lab conditions.

The ambient room temperature was kept at 22C +/- 1C, if this changed we stopped testing until it had returned to this base level. As was pointed out to me by BlitZ our readings for the Swiftech were off in the first test as it is impossible to go lower than the ambient room temperature. Cheers BlitZ for pointing this out and accordingly we now say that all readings are +/- 1C.

Installation

After being spoilt by the Power Coolers, we are back to the old PCB worrier, the straight clip. The thermal pad came in a little ziplock bag, the kind you get your er... well you know what I mean. The pad may have been a more efficient transference method but to keep the tests as similar as possible we use Arctic Silver II as our thermal grease. Cleaned core for the 1,000th time (admire damage to core corners caused by Mini Orb) applied AS II, seated hsf and inserted screwdriver in clip. It was quite easy to attach as the screwdriver inserted from the outside to inside thus allowing you to push away and allow the clip to clear the socket notch before pulling towards you to clip it into place. It is hard to explain but you will know what I mean if I say that it is not like the Global Win screwdriver notch which only allows downward pressure to be exerted. I began to test and got some awful results at both idle and full load. I took off the unit and the imprint left was of only half the core, I had not seated it well, so I made sure the second time.

Noise

We all know what to expect here so let's get on with it.

Nothing surprising, the Delta churns out a lot of sound at 7,200 rpm but if you want to cool at a high level you need to be prepared to put up with the noise or go water cooled.

Danger

This little warrior has chosen the path of righteousness as he wants to be counted among our army of overclocking coolers. We have no alternative but to wheel out the Swiftech MC-462A as it's the overclocking champ. I fear for the little guy's safety. Therefore we are going to make up some new rules to suit our own purposes (we would make great dictators!). We have decided that the Swiftech is just too efficient for the rest of the competition and so we have created a third category. This we shall name Crazy Assed Cooling. There is only one entrant in this so far and that is obviously the Swiftech. The new head of the Overclocking section is the CAK 38 from Global Win and this will be the SK-06's opponent.

1.6v at 7*100 MHz gets us to the default speed of our Duron. The readings are taken 30 mins after boot for idle and 30 mins of 100% CPU usage under Seti@home for full load. The band leaves the field and the combatants size each other up. Let the games begin.

The CAK puts in a bone crunching hit on the SK-06. It rips 3C out of the newcomer at idle and pips it by 1C under load. Load score is what we are really looking at, how well a cooler can dissipate heat at higher levels. This is where these guys earn their bread, cooling your core so it doesn't get a chance to become temperamental. Round 1 to the GW.

The 900 MHz test is 9*100 @1.775v which is beginning to produce a reasonable amount of wattage whilst searching the skies for ET's call home. I'll rack 'em up and these boys can knock 'em down (or each other).

The SK-06 pulls level with a nice shoulder charge on the CAK but trips itself up with it's idle score. The picture looks the same as @ 700 MHz with both hsf units performing at a high standard.

Can the SK-06 put it's nose in front in the last test? 945 MHz (9*105) @1.85v is our Duron maxed out so this is the top heat level we can run at (for now). After reading an article at Overclockers.com, we will in future be using another program instead of our beloved Seti@home to produce the 100% load on the CPU. This is CPU Stability Test 6.0 and you can get it from Tweakfiles. It seems to heat the processor faster and uniformly, but this will not be introduced until next review. Back to the last hurdle and the boys are champing at the bit, so let's get it on:

Woohoo. A semi turn around in fortunes for our boys. The SK-06 has managed to beat the CAK by 1C under load and has narrowed the gap by 1C at idle. This is the limit of our testing ability on the Duron and simulates how well these guys react to extreme overclocking. They are both strong under load but the CAK is able to keep it's new title with some excellent idle scores.

Conclusion

The SK-06 was reprieved from a mauling at the hands of the Swiftech, but couldn't quite outshine the new king. It produced a very impressive set of results against the CAK but in the end it's idle scores were slightly under par to take away the crown from the Global Win. I think that the heatsink is very, very attractive and well made. It will all, in the end, boil down to the retail price and availability of each unit. There is no difference between them under load and they are both equally equipped to deal with high wattage. My personal preference would be for the SK-06 on a purely aesthetic level (I took 30 pictures of it and can't bring myself to bin the rest!). For stock users, buy it and attach a low profile fan, overclockers buy it and strap on an even bigger fan than the Delta. Either way you will all appreciate it.

The final ChillBlast rating is ********

Thermalright's site can be found at www.thermalright.com

We extend the hand of thanks to Chris at Thermalright for his prompt missives and help.

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