Overclocker Cafe - TR2-M1 and TR2-M2

Thermaltake TR2-M1 and TR2-M2

M1 cont.

After wiping the thermal goo off the base, we can see that the factory lap job on this thing is pretty lacking. The other thing to take note of here is how the copper base is attached. Instead of being either inserted into the base of the sink itself, or soldered on the copper plate is attached using four screws.

This worried us at first, as that no matter how well it looks like it's fitted to the sink, it would be virtually impossible to make complete direct contact over the whole surface area. So......off with the copper!

Guess what? A nice thin layer of thermal paste was applied to help with the contact between the copper and aluminum.

The M2 is, as you would expect from the naming order, a more upscale version of the M1. The M2 has a variable speed TMD fan, one of those Y.S. Tech jobbers. You can see that the fan speed controller that TR2 sent along is branded with Thermaltake's logo. While the it's a nice touch, especially considering the price of the heatsink, it's still a rear mounted controller designed to fit a PCI slot which means reaching around the back of the computer to adjust it.

The M2 is built very similar to the M1 in that the cooling fins are divided into two sections by the center gap for the clip. On this sink there are 23 cooling fins (or 46 if you want to get picky) but these do not taper off as much as the ones on the M1 do.

Other than the fan, the real difference in these two heatsinks comes into view as we check out the bottom. On the M1 the copper base was attached to the aluminum via four screws. However, with the M2 the copper is milled into the aluminum. It should make for better heat dissipation here. Also on the M2 was the pre-applied thermal paste.

Once again the lap job on the base wasn't quite as nice as we would have liked to have seen, but it was pretty smooth all the same.

Testing

Time to get to the nitty-gritty and put their feet in the fire. Once again to test the sinks, we'll put each one in our test box and run SiSoft Sandra 2003 Pro's Burn In wizard for 30 minutes and record the temperature via a thin tipped thermal probe mounted to the side of the CPU. Since I wiped off the factory thermal paste, I'll be going back with some Artic Silver 3 on both heatsinks.

Test System

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