Heatsink Construction & Design

When Thermaltake named this bad boy the “Big Typhoon” they were not kidding. When it was released it was one of the first true super coolers and tipped the scales in at a little over 800g (813 to be precise which is just over 1.792lbs); however, it the “Big” in Big Typhoon more than likely refers to its height rather than its weight. This cooler stands a tall and proud 13.4cms (5.27 inches!), which still makes it one of the taller single fan down draft cooler on the market today.


Unlike many down draft coolers on the market which are nothing more than a single tower cooler bent 90°, the Big Typhoon is in reality two tower coolers which have been bent 90° and in some ways look like to UFC fighters bowing to each other before a match. Each “cooler” is approximately 3/4s the size of a normal tower cooler but contains 3 long heatpipes. This gives the Big Typhoon a very wide girth to go with its height and as an added bonus this means the Big Typhoon has 6 heatpipes in total. Of course, even though there is six heatpipes (and unlike the 6 U shape heatpipes on a Ultima 90) each heatpipe can only transfer heat in one direction only which has a tendency to reduce their individual efficiency somewhat, but as there are six of them this should only become a concern under extremely high thermal loads.


The intriguing thing about having two independent heatsinks set in opposition to each other is half of the copper base is covered by its own heatsink. In theory this should provide better thermal transfer for multi core processors as in dual (and quad) core chips the individual CPUs are themselves offset. Only real world testing will prove or disprove this theorem, but either way it is an intriguing idea.


Once the fan is removed, you will immediately see how Thermaltake was able to not only mount a large fan to two separate heatsinks but also able to meld those two separate heatsinks into such a stable and secure platform. In a nutshell, they have bent over the two heatsinks and then mounted an aluminum plenum to them. When one removes this plenum you instantly notice those two heatsinks are in no way attached to each other and they flex a little bit out of shape. This is a good thing as this means when they are “captured” by this fan shroud / plenum they are actually under pressure and thus a lot tighter than if they were just loosely held together.

In testing, the individual heatsinks exhibited a lot of flex which does instantly disappear when the cooler is put back together. In fact it is a very stable and secure cooler when in its ready to use factory configuration and felt very tight and strong when in one’s hands.

In total there are 142 fins (71 per small cooler) and they are mounted extremely close together. This gives the Big Typhoon a very large surface area for cooling but it also comes at a higher static air pressure price and a powerful fan will be required to properly cool them (thus making the Big Typhoon a bad candidate for passive cooling). The fins themselves have a wavy pattern which helps negate some of the negative effects of being so closely mounted together but will it be enough?


On the positive side, the heatpipes themselves have been soldered to the base to help maximize the transference of heat from the copper base to them. This is always good and next to having the actual heatpipes in contact with the CPU itself, is probably the next best thing.

The base of the Big Typhoon itself has not been polished to a mirror like surface and in fact shows some major tool marks and for intended price range this is one area where the Big Typhoon shows its age as it is now a bit below average.