Heatsink Construction & Design Con't
Lowering static pressure is the name of the game for most coolers. This goal usually becomes a delicate balancing act between having too many fins spaced tightly together (but with higher surface area) versus two few spaced widely apart (and thus not enough surface area to properly cool the heatpipes).
Designing for low static pressure, by itself is a very good reason for the non-standard fin style on the Thor's Hammer but as we will see in the installation section this makes fan mounting a whole heck of a lot easier as well.
While the ease of installating a fan explains the unique width of the various fins, why do they vary in depth? To begin with, this cooler has easily one (actually two) of the best “faces” we have seen.
In the past we have talked about the fact that if a fin array is nothing more than a slab-faced affair, the air from its cooling fan slams into it very much like its hitting a wall. This in turn requires high static pressure fans to force the air through the face of the fins and out the back. Meanwhile, staggering the faces works well at eliminating this issue.
When looking straight on at the front of the Thor's Hammer, the left side "hammer" shaped fin is always more pronounced with the wide end of the fin or “face" of the hammer pointed towards you. Conversely, the right sides hammer fin is pointed away from you and is only slightly offset from the fin array. What this results in is the fan not being pointed directly at the face; rather it is angled to the left causing a greater gap between it and the face of the fin array. This in and of itself is an interesting concept as the air from the fan will sweep across the fins in a flowing motion and not all hit at once.
The above angling of the fan will probably help reduce static pressure but Xigmatek did not stop there. As mentioned earlier, the large full-width fins are basically rectangular in shape with the corners cut off. What this does is actually angle the leading edge of the fins so that it looks like an L shape. On its own, this shape would most likely have no effect on static pressures but when you combine the angled fan direction with this oddly shaped fin, what you end up with is a wedged shape face pointed into the direction of the air movement. This shape cuts the air movement and (in theory) drastically reduces the static pressure needed to properly cool the fin array.
The best way to get a clear understanding of what this cooler is all about is to look at its bottom half from two angles. On first glance it looks like an amalgamation of the
OCZ Gladiator Max cooler we reviewed a while back, but then you realize that this particular product has even more heatpipes sprouting from it. In total you have 7 heatpipes in two sizes strategically placed in and on the base of the Thor’s Hammer. The inner layer of three U shaped 6mm heatpipes sits right under the metal cooling towers above the base's center point. These heatpipes are primarily there to cool down the aluminum pillars which are in direct contact with the CPU.
The short but chunky aluminum cooling towers do help slow the buildup of heat and thus hot zones on the cooler. Unfortunately since they are so small, have only a few small layers of fins and considering the fins and the towers themselves reside below the level of the fans' cooling zone the net effect is they are really nothing more than passive heatsinks. These are heat sinks which will become overloaded fairly quickly by today’s hot running quads. This was one of the major weaknesses of the OCZ Gladiator Max and by not only adding heatpipes to suck the heat away from the aluminum foundation but making them an integral part of the fin array Xigmatek has minimized this inherent limitation to a great extent.
As with all HDTs we have reviewed, there are aluminum inserts spaced between the flattened heatpipes to add strength and rigidity to the whole affair. Unfortunately, the aluminum inserts do not run the full width of the base and while we have come to expect a certain amount of gap or distance between the heatpipes and these spacers, this is one of the worst examples we have seen in a long while. There are veritable crevices between the aluminum shim and the heatpipes.
On the positive side, at least the aluminum pillars are not offset like we have seen before and are all have a center alignment to them. This minor positive is negated by the fact that the base is not that well polished; in fact, it is relatively rough in texture and appearance. To be honest, it appears the original difficulties in mass producing a well polished HDT base have still not been solved by Xigmatek like they have been by other companies and our sample is on the lower end of the spectrum. Maybe our expectations of what a good polished HDT base can look like, have been elevated recently by the amazing polishing job found on the Cooler Master 212 PLUS.
