It has been quite a while since we have reviewed a new heatsink and fan. The heatsink and fan market has become so saturated, that it is extremely hard for companies to compete. This might be bad for the manufacturers, however, I believe stiff competition and a plethora of heatsinks to choose from is a good thing for the consumer. It ensures that only the best of the best reaches resellers. In turn, the consumer receives a high quality product that has been tested thoroughly by the manufacturer.

     Today we take a look at Power Cooler's latest offering, the PCH161S copper heatsink and fan. With the PCH161S, you get more than just a copper heatsink and simple fan. This baby also comes with a variable fan speed controller, thermal sensor, shim and thermal goop! To top it all off, the PCH161S is also one of the few universal heatsinks for both the Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Athlon!

Specs

• Fan: 70x70x20 mm Double blade

• Rated Voltage: 12 VDC

• Rated Current : 0.58 A

• Speed: 6800 RPM

• Max Air Flow: 39.65 CFM

• Max Air Pressure: 0.361 Inch

• Noise: 48.57 dBA

• Input Power : 6.96 W

• Bearing type : Ball Bearing

• Heat Sink Dimension: 62x70x40mm

• Weight: 510 grams

     Upon first look, the Power Cooler HSF looks like every other copper thin fin heatsink. The big difference here is the fins are actually strips of copper, not one solid fin spanning the length of the base. You would think that because of this design, it wouldn't cool very well because less cooling surface usually means higher temperatures. On the other hand, this is just an educated guess at this point so we will just have to wait and see...

     The base of the heatsink is buffed to perfection. The base of the sample I received was of awesome quality with no surface scratches, pits or flaws. Very impressive... Unfortunately, the mounting clip is another story. Some of you experienced hardware gurus may notice that the Socket-A mounting clip is actually backwards compared to other heatsinks. This means you install the long end first and then snapping the short end over the Zif Socket tab. This makes installing the spring clip a little harder than normal and is probably the main reason Cooler Master included a CPU shim so you don't smash the CPU. As for the CPU shim Power Cooler has included, I do not recommend using it. The shim is solid metal and there is no protective coating to keep it from shorting out the bridges on Athlon/Duron processors. If you feel you need a Socket-A shim, I recommend using this one: (removed).

Testing

     For testing, I'm currently using a new setup consisting of an ABIT KD7-RAID motherboard and AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU. The test system is an "open air" system which means there is no computer case or fans blowing over the hardware (see image below). The CPU is unlocked and running on a 166MHz bus at 1.8GHz. Arctic Silver III thermal paste is used in all heatsink testing. Room temperature is maintained at 23º Celsius throughout testing.
 

Results

Internal CPU Core Temps

Conclusion

     Compared to one of my favorite coolers of all time, the Cooler Master Heat Pipe, the Power Cooler PCH161S is looking pretty sad. I had hoped to see some better numbers here, but it just wasn't meant to be. With core temperatures reaching into the high 50s, I just can't recommend this heatsink to Overclockers. However, stock AMD and P4 users should find the Power Cooler PCH161S to adequately fulfill their cooling needs.

     I believe the PCH161S could have performed much better with a little more cooling surface. Power Cooler should try to double the amount of cooling fins. While they are at it, they should adopt a better spring clip that is more user friendly and toss the CPU shim. This was a nice looking heatsink with decent quality, but it just isn't something we can recommend for overclocking, especially when there are much better performing heatsinks readily available at a great price.

Price and availability unknown.