ThermalRight Ultra 90 AMD Cooler

Speaking of maximizing air flow, if you look carefully at the tops and bottoms of the fins, you will notice how one side is turned in and the other turned out.  ThermalRight calls these bent sections, winglets and cites them as helping to channel air flow through the fin assembly in such a way as to increase the maximum amount of air that can be pushed through efficiently. 

Below are shots of the heatpipes whose center is through the nickel coated copper base and up in a 'U' shape on either side.  Heatpipes 101: The warm processor heats the pipe which has a small wick and fluid inside.  As the fluid heats (low boiling point fluid) it evaporates, thereby transferring thermal energy from the base up to the top of the pipe where the fluid condensates onto the wick as its heat is pulled off the pipe onto the convection fins.  From here, the fluid is drawn back to the base, where the process repeats.  A highly efficient method of cooling as you can see.

The Ultra 90s base was smooth to the touch and had no discernable irregularities.  The lapping job on the nickel plated copper was adequate but not quite something you could shave in by its reflection.

ThermalRight has got to have the best fan mounting system on the market.  Now, to you old hands you won't be seeing anything new but if you have never seen the simple way the fan bracket wires work you are in for a treat.  The wires themselves feed their ends into holes at the top and bottom of the cooler.  Several holes are visible as you can see here which allows for multiple different sizes of fans.  We selected a 90mm Thermaltake fan.  See how the wires turn up and 'clamp' at the screw hole points to hold the fan in place?  Very hip.  The four holes you see per side allows you to select most any fan size you want to cool for silent operation or raw cooling power.

Lastly, we have the clip mounting area.  ThermalRight Ultra 90 cooler actually fits the AMD K8 or LGA 775.  (Jeremy kept trying to explain this to me for his review of the Ultra 90 for the LGA 775 but I didn't understand - sorry bro.)  The cooler and clip mounting location for each is identical, only the clips differ between AMD and Intel units.  This keeps manufacturing cost significantly lower.  The K8 clip shown below works with the stock AMD K8 heatsink lugs.  Can you believe it, no motherboard removal!

Installation

Installation was a breeze and had no incidents related to it.  We did notice that the socket's orientation on the end user's mainboard will determine if the fan on the cooler blows toward the rear case exhaust fan or up to the power supply.  Either is expectable but 'up' will only work if you have a PSU with a bottom mounted cooling fan and even then you are blowing hot air at your power supply.  This isn't a huge ding or ThermalRight but certainly something the end user needs to consider.
 

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