by Brian Tiller (4/22/2003)

Introduction

One of the most important factors in keeping a good system running is the temperature. To that end, everybody and their brother are making heatsinks and if you notice most of them are geared to the AMD line of processors. To be honest, when I first started my transformation to geekiness I wondered about this until I realized that AMD chips run hotter than their Intel counterparts. Therefore heatsink manufacturers gear most of their cooling techniques to keeping the AMD's running nice and smooth. I figure that the three most important considerations for these designs are:

• Temperature control

• Sound level

• Looks

Of these, the temperature control is obviously the most important with the loudness of the fans running a close second. Today we're going to take a look at one of Thermalright's newer AMD heatsinks, the SLK-700. Thermalright has been making heatsinks for a couple of years now and to be honest (and possibly a little biased at this point) they've been doing it well. We have reviewed quite a few of their products here and I use a SK-7 sink for my AMD box and a AX-478 for my 2.4GHz P4 machine. Today I'm going to find out if the SLK-700 is going to replace my SK-7, so let's all send a big "Thanks" out to the guys at Thermalright for making this review possible.

My first impression for this thing was "heavy chuncka copper here". Weighing in at a whopping 510 grams it outweighs my SK-7 by quite a bit. As you can see from the pics, Thermalright has stuck with what I've come to think of as their standard AMD cooler shape. With their thin fin design they were able to cram 35 fins onto this thing. Let's take a look at the specs before we go any further.

Specifications:

• Application: AMD 2200+ and up

• Weight: 510g (without fan)

• Dimensions: L 80 x W 61 x H 45 mm (without fan)

• Construction: All Copper baby!

• Fan: None included with our sample

Speaking of fans, as you noticed there was no fan included with out sample, however on the Thermalright website they do include a 74mm Y.S. Tech fan with the cooler. The coolers design will accept 60, 70 and 74mm fans via the stepped ridges along the edges of the fins.