COOLINK GFXCHILLA Heatsink, Cooling Down Our Hardware

Coolink has been making inroads in the market for PC heatsink components. It now seeks to impress us with a cooling system for the least-cool part of a computer, the GPU. Let’s see how its new entry checks out.

THE COOLINK GFXCHILLA AND CHILLARAMIC: “COOLING DOWN OUR HARDWARE.”

Introduction

Coolink International Corporation was established in 1996. It specializes in refrigeration and is well known in the industry. Through the years, Coolink has designed and manufactured many high-performance heatsinks. Headquartered in Taiwan, it decided to explore new markets, bringing its products to Europe in 2005. The company stands for performance, excellent quality, and very attractive prices.

Today, Coolink is growing significantly worldwide. Its division that produces products to cool PC components has grown substantially, along with its sister company, Noctua. It is increasingly introducing new products for various types of hardware. One of these is the GFXChilla, a high-performance heatsink for video cards, which takes up only one PCI slot, providing maximum performance in a small space. One important requirement for a heatsink to perform well is the thermal paste that is added to conduct heat to it. Knowing this, Coolink has made a ceramic thermal paste to compete in this market, which it calls Chillaramic.

First Look

The GFXChilla is a high-performance heatsink that only takes up one slot, in addition to the one occupied by the video card. It features four powerful high-performance heatpipes made from pure C110 copper (chrome-plated annealed copper) to transfer heat better. They are connected by a 39mm² square (0.06 square inch) sheet of pure C110 copper, which is also the base that makes contact with the video card’s GPU chip. On the other side of the heatpipes are 65 well-placed and well-soldered aluminum fins that support two high-performance fans (80mm L x 10mm W, or 3.1″ L x 0.4″ W). Thanks to their bearings, they are very silent (Coolink’s fans have generally been extremely quiet, with excellent airflow).

The GFXChilla’s packaging is good. In front, we can see the two blue fans, with the heatsink underneath them. The back of the package displays the unit’s specifications and measurements in a way that gives a good general idea of the product.

The GFXChilla comes with various accessories, which covered all of our video cards’ cooling needs. These include 6 standard RAM heatsinks, 4 low-profile RAM heatsinks, 4 large voltage regulator heatsinks, 4 small voltage regulator heatsinks, thermal paste, mounting screws, a 4-pin voltage adaptor, tape to protect the GPU, and a user’s manual.

We should also note the benefits of Coolink’s Chillaramic thermal paste. It combines high performance and ease of use, because its ceramic nanoparticles achieve high heat transfer. It also doesn’t conduct electricity, unlike other thermal pastes. It comes in a highly visible package in which you can easily see the 10 grams of Chillaramic paste, as well as some of its specifications and advantages.

Installation

Installing the GFXChilla is a snap, requiring only a Phillips screwdriver. Remove the thermal tape that protects each memory heatsink. The GFXChilla comes with the necessary screws (depending on the video card). Cover your video card’s adjustment holes with the included plastic washers. Then insert the Phillips nuts that come with the GFXChilla, and you’re done.

Test Setup

Tests:

3D Ozone Furmark V 1.6.5

Far Cry 2

We let the 3Dozone FURMARK version V 1.6.5 benchmark run for one hour to apply significant graphic stress to the Foxconn 9800GT OC Edition GPU and provide a stiff test for the GFXChilla and the Chillaramic thermal paste. The results are shown below.

We played video games for one hour to verify the effect on the temperature.

We ran the Chillaramic test with a C2D E8500 processor and Swiftech Apogee GTX waterblock. The block was placed on the processor with three different thermal pastes:

Chillaramic

Noctua NT-H1

Arctic Silver Ceramic

Results

In general, the Coolink GFXChilla performed quite well in competition with one of the best VGA heatsinks on the market, the Zalman VF1000Cu. One strong point for the GFXChilla is the very low sound level generated by its two fans. Even at the highest RPM, no sound was perceptible, while the Zalman VF1000Cu is very noisy at all RPM levels.

The GFXChilla with Chillaramic thermal paste is a great combination, which even surpassed the Zalman VF1000Cu with Noctua NT-H1 thermal paste.

There’s nothing more to say about the thermal paste comparison. The Chillaramic ranks very highly. Sometimes we tend to forget how important having the right paste can be.

Conclusions

GFXChilla

The Coolink system performed its thermal dissipation task very well on our hardware. It’s very pleasant to be able to rely on a new brand for this important function.

The GFXChilla impressed us with the its advantages over the competition: excellent heat dissipation and transfer, its size and design, and its effective and extremely quiet ventilation system. It’s a welcome addition to the marketplace.

The final score is 98 out of 100 owls and we give the “Coolink GFXChilla Heatsink” our Editors Choice Award.

Chillaramic

We were astonished by the heat transfer effectiveness of the Chillaramic thermal paste. It’s even more impressive because it equals the performance of the competition from the largest players in this market.

The final score is 100 out of 100 owls and we give the “Coolink Chillaramic Thermal Paste” our Editors Choice Award.

Translated by: Ed Winograd

Written by: Jorge Alberto Corona

SunBeam is a Chinese company that specializes in making accessories that make computers look better and that improve their cooling systems. It has experienced incredible growth in its cooling business. One example of this is its Core-Contact Freezer.

One would think that an add-on heatsink for PC processors that promises to do an incomparable cooling  job and is made by one of the main producers of modding accessories might be more like a fashionable accessory than a product for achieving better performance. But we’ll see later that this isn’t true of Sunbeam and its mepowerful Core-Contact Freezer.

First Look

The front of the package shows the physical features of the Core-Contact Freezer, for example, how the heatpipes are part of the contact area at the base of the heatsink.

The back of the package has a list of the main features, and details about the solution that Sunbeam offers.

Here, we can see the contact area at the bottom of the heatsink’s base, with its 4 heatpipes.

Unfortunately, the lapping work isn’t the best. It’s far from the quality of other similar products. We can see that the little animal figure is barely reflected in the surface of the base of the Core-Contact Freezer. This is something that we could improve on ourselves and therefore achieve greater performance.

Here, we can see the entire Core-Contact Freezer. It has a very common tower design for its modern high-performance heatsinks.

The rest of the package contents are simple, but attractive. Its anchoring system is extremely easy to affix. Sunbeam has not only given us a speed regulator for the fan, but has also added a thermal paste well known for its performance, TX-2.

Specifications

Hardware

- Memory: 2 x 1 GB Corsair Dominator DDR 800

- Processor: Intel Q9550 (2.8Ghz @ 3.6 Ghz )

- Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45 UD3P

- Heatsink: Coolink Silentator

- Hard Disk: Western Digital Raptor SAA 150GB

- Power Source :Antec Quattro 1000W

- Video Card: ATi Diamond HD3870 Viper Ruby Edition 512MB

Software

- Prime 95

- CoreTemp

Methodology

After one of the heatsinks was installed and the temperature was read in the IDLE state, the Prime 95 program was used with the Blend test to take a second temperature reading after 20 minutes, to find the temperature at Full Load. This was repeated, using overclocking for each of the heatsinks.

Results

As you can see, the results are reasonable, especially because we’re in a time when there’s a lot of heat. While the Coolink Silentator had a slight advantage while the system was in the IDLE state (when no program was running), when the system was under Full Load, the Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer gained ground and pulled ahead of its competitor. This is best seen when the system is overclocked. The Core-Contact Freezer did a better job of handling the heat generated by the 3.65 Ghz processor, greatly surpassing its Coolink competitor, by more than 5℃. That’s a considerable difference, one which could be increased with a better job of lapping.

Conclusions

At the end of our test, we saw the effect of having the heatpipes directly in contact with the processor. We also noted that the efficiency of heat absorption went up as processor speed increased. SunBeam has little experience in implementing heatsinks. Nevertheless, it obtained excellent results against a high-quality performance unit like the Coolink Silentator.

It’s worthwhile to note that it’s the inclusion of an excellent thermal paste, TX-2, that keeps this heatsink working efficiently for longer.

One point against the Core-Contact Freezer is that it may be incompatible with certain motherboards that have large heatsinks in the chipset area or around the mofsets, keeping the unit from coming in contact with them.

Another is the amount of noise generated. This can be very annoying after a while.

The cost is in the normal range for this type of heatsink, which varies from $45 to $60 at the time of this review.

The Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer is an excellent and capable performer that can be modified with a low-RPM fan for those who are bothered by the noise it generates. It could also be improved by a better job of lapping.

The final score is 95 out of 100 owls, and we give the “Sunbeam Core-Contact Freezer” our Editor’s Choice Award.

Translated by: Ed Winograd

Written by: Jorge Alberto Corona