Arctic Cooling Copper Lite CPU heat sink - What you get
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You get the cooler, a case badge, and thermal paste. I tested the thermal paste out and it is terrible; I couldn’t get it to spread on the CPU at all. On the little back box you receive, you will find the installation instructions, and the technical specifications.
The heat sink is made almost entirely out of aluminum. There are fins that come off from the base, but these are in the middle, where the brackets are located. It also happens to be directly over the CPU core.
In the base, however, is a piece of copper. Copper is a better heat conductor then aluminum, but costs more. It is unclear how big the copper piece is, but it isn’t very big on the bottom of the heat sink. This really shouldn’t be a problem though; the AMD processors don’t have ICSes on them, so the actual contact between the CPU and heat sink is small. This appears to be able to cover the core easily, though.
A very important part of a heat sink is its size and weight. Weight is an issue with all coolers, but it's even more of an issue with many Socket A processors. The Athlon XPs don’t have ICSes, so the cooler must sit directly on the core. This is great for making contact for better cooling, but you must be careful not to crush the core. On the flip side, less weight means less surface area from which the heat can disperse. The Copper Lite falls just inside the minimum weight AMD recommends, at 300g. The fan isn’t too powerful, so this cooler might not be that great at cooling.
The fan is what makes this CPU cooler stand out. Arctic Cooling seems to really like this type of fan, and I don’t blame them; I really like this type of fan, too. It uses Arctic Cooling’s patented "reverse hanging" mounting. This cuts down on the overall noise of the fan dramatically. The fan is mounted on the heat sink with rubber vibration dampeners, not too different from what you can find on many tennis rackets.
The only feature left to talk about is the mounting clips. These are specially designed to give better contact with the core and fasten down to ensure it stays on firmly when transporting your PC. I’m still undecided as to whether these clips are a good idea.
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