Akasa Evo 120 Heat Pipe Cooler

The screws slide into the back of the motherboard, and are attached to the front using small thumb-screws.  A rubber washer is placed on top of these, and the mounting brackets of the Heat Sink sits down on top of the washers.  These included rubber washers should help to prevent any vibration, and reduce noise even further.

The Akasa Evo is then secured down to the motherboard with the four provided thumb screws.  Three of these were quite easy to attach, but the fourth was under one of the heat pipes, so it made it a little more difficult to reach.  This is easily solved with a small pair of pliers or tweezers to hold onto the thumb screw and to get it started.

The Evo is a very large cooler, and a noticeable presence inside the case.  Have a look at the before and after.

  

One problem that I ran into after the installation was getting my removable mainboard tray back into my MGE XG Dragon case.  Having the mainboard tray out made it easier to reach and secure the thumbscrews, it would be a shame to have to do that inside the case.  After a little Google searching for a good remedy, I came across another article where the reviewer actually had to bend the heat pipes on the cooler to get it back into his case.  I didn't have to go that far, but a little pressure was required to get this big cooler to fit back in.  After that, it was smooth sailing again.

Testing

Let's put the Akasa Evo to the test and see how well it performs.  In this comparison, the Akasa Evo will go against the stock Intel cooler.

Test Bed

• Intel Pentium 4 640 @ 3.2GHz

• AOpen i945Ga-PHS

• (2) 1 GB Mushkin Enhanced DDR2-4200

• Western Digital 80gb 7200rpm IDE HDD

• HIS Radeon X850XT PE

• Generic CD-RW drive

• Windows XP Pro with Service Pack 2 and all updates installed

Method

To test the Akasa Evo, the system was allowed to idle for 10 minutes.  The system was then brought to full load for 30 minutes.  The Load temperature was taken after this period.  The system was then allowed to idle for another 10 minutes.  The Idle temperature was taken here.  This was repeated five times.  The high and low temperatures were discarded, and the remaining three idle and load temperatures were averaged for the results.

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