MODTHEBOX.COM - Canada's Premier Case Modding Source - Reviews - Sunbeam Overclocker's CPU Cooler Kit Review

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The installation process for the Sunbeam Overclocker's CPU Cooler Kit is very straightforward despite the lack of more detailed instructions. The first process is to attach two of the black plastic fan conductors to the Flexible Mylar Air Duct. Since this product will be ducting cool air to the CPU, consumers will need to choose the appropriate fan duct connector to match the size of the fan currently on their CPU heatsink. In this example, I am attaching one 87mm and one 83mm to the Flexible Mylar Air Duct. Each end of the plastic fan duct connectors are secured to the Mylar Air Duct using two stainless steel hose clamps.

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The second step in the installation process to attach the included Plastic Chimney attachment to the PSU fan located on the back of the case. The unit is secured using two 6-32 mounting screws and two pieces of double stick tape. The purpose of this particular unit is to duct hot air away from the PSU.

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The final and most important step is the installation of the Flexible Mylar Duct on top of the CPU heatsink. As previously mentioned, consumers will need to determine the size of their CPU heatsink fan and attach the appropriate fan duct connector In this example, I will be using the new Thermaltake Silent Boost HSF Cooler with a replaced TT-8025 80mm fan. The Thermaltake TT-8025 fan is capable of pushing 37 CFM at 2900 RPM with a noise level of 30 dBA. The unit installs on top of the CPU heatsink fan location and is secured by four screws located in each corner. At this point, consumers are required to stretch the Flexible Mylar Duct towards any intake or exhaust location of an 80mm fan mount. I had a few problems in this area due to the case that I was using during the process of this review. The Flexible Mylar Tube was not long enough to route to any available 80mm fan mount. Newer server tower cases such as the Thermaltake Xaser brand and Enermax CS-101812 brand use a long length wise chassis design. The Sunbeam Overclocker's CPU Cooler Kit seems to be specifically designed only for mid-tower cases rather than larger server cases. The second issue noted is that most of the newer Antec, Aspire, Chieftech, Chenming and Enermax cases also use removable plastic fount mounts. This type of configuration makes it difficult to attach the 87mm or 83mm duct connector to any 80mm fan since the plastic fan mount makes it impossible to fully attach the unit. By modding the case location with standard fan mounting holes, this problem can be easily corrected.

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As an alternative, I stretched the Mylar Air Duct as far as it could go towards the front of an Xaser III case since the front portion has been modified with an open air intake.

Testing:

In order to provide accurate test results, I ran the following configuration in two types of scenarios. The first scenario was the system without the Sunbeam Overclocker's CPU Cooler Kit installed and the second with the kit fully installed. I will be using Artic Silver 3 in this round of testing for the Thermaltake Silent Boost HSF with the following components:

Asus AV7333 Motherboard

AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU

512 MB Kingmax Tiny BGA DDR 333 RAM

MSI G4 MX440 8X video card

Maxtor D740X-GL 60 GB Hard drive

D-Link DFE-530TX NIC card

LG GCC-4120B Combination IDE Drive (12x8x32 CDRW + 8x DVD)

The "Burn-In Wizard" from SiSoft Sandra 2003 is used to put the CPU under concentrated load for a pre-determined amount of time. The options selected in "Burn-In Wizard" run the CPU and CPU Multimedia benchmarks for approximately 15 minutes. The system is left alone for approximate 15 minutes before the burn-in test is performed. Maximum temperatures are measured in degree Celsius and recorded for idle, full load, idle overclock and full load overclock using an independant thermal probe and Motherboard Monitor 5.3.4.0. The system was run in normal mode at 1.5 GHz and in overclocked mode (VCORE 1.8, FSB 142, Multiplier 11.5x) in order to get the system running at 1.6 GHz. Ambient temperature was measured at 30 degrees Celsius.

Conclusion:
Based on the results from the performance graph, the Sunbeam Overclocker's CPU Cooler Kit does demonstrate that the theory of ducting your CPU heatsink fan will lower overall CPU system temperatures. The results I received were far less impressive than the 15 degree drop that Sunbeam claims this kit will achieve. For the record, I should restate the disclaimer on the package advises that the effect of the Overclocker CPU Cooler Kit is based on each user's CPU and computer environment. It is hard to determine which combination of heatsink, hardware and fan works best with this package but results may vary. In its basic form the kit does provide you with all the components required to remove hot air away from an overclocked CPU and does work as advertised. Consumers should note that you will have to get used to the long Flexible Mylar tube which should provide a challenge for keeping cable management to a minimum. If you use a server tower case you will also need to find a unique method of mounting this product since the 50cm Mylar Air Duct might not work in all cases. One final point to note is that consumers who use popular heatsink coolers from Zalman and Thermalright will have some issues using this kit due to the nature of each manufacturer's heatsink design. Aside from a few minor issues, I'm rating this kit a 6.5 out of 10 and If you have any questions regarding this review be sure to visit the ADPMods website for more information or discuss them in our forums.

Pros:

Reduces CPU temperatures
Easy to install
Covers two known sources for heat generation
Good add-on for an overclocked environment
Cons:

Some installation issues with server tower cases
Kit components are easy to duplicate
Weak documentation
Limited to 70mm and 80mm fan sizes only
Performance results are based on type of heatsink, CPU platform and computer environment
Price