While the overclocking community grows, newer designs for heat sinks are made to fight off heat. Such is the situation with the Molex Thermal Acoustic Products. Molex has been an OEM heat sink manufacturer for quite a while. They mass produce heat sinks at very low costs and supply OEM computer companies as heat solutions. We recently received word from Molex that they have confidence in their new product and asked us to sample a review. How will it perform? Will it be able to ease the pain of heat? We shall see.
While the overclocking community grows, newer designs for heat sinks are made to fight off heat. Such is the situation with the Molex Thermal Acoustic Products. Molex has been an OEM heat sink manufacturer for quite a while. They mass produce heat sinks at very low costs and supply OEM computer companies as heat solutions. We recently received word from Molex that they have confidence in their new product and asked us to sample a review. How will it perform? Will it be able to ease the pain of heat? We shall see.
Molex 37256-005:
Molex has a variety of the 37256-00x series of heat sinks. The 37256-005 we received classifies as the high performing heat sink with a more powerful fan. Basically, the last three digits "00x" comes with a different fan equipped--the lower the number, the less powerful and quieter the fan. The heat sink is made of a copper base with aluminum fins enclosed in an aluminum shroud. It looks like most of the heat sinks out there. The quality and build of the heat sink is only sub standard. The shroud is soldered to the bottom of the base but in a very poor fashion. It's rather loose. The 37256 uses the traditional mounting clip. It's good that it grabs onto all three teeth of the socket instead of just one. Installation was easy. The clip was not hard to push down and yet still managed to give excellent contact.
A good thing I would like to point out is the protection of the copper base. Molex enclosed the bottom surface with a clear plastic to keep it from getting scratched.
Another thing to note is that Molex has some pre-applied thermal interface material (TIM) included. It's not the usual Silicone grease. Upon some reading through the included information sheets, the pre-applied TIM known as Shin Etsu G751. My first intention was to test the heat sink with the pre-applied TIM but I figured that overclockers should know not to use anything pre-applied and go with Arctic Silver or some other good TIM like Nanotherm. So I wiped off the Shin Etsu and applied my Arctic Silver for further testings.
The picture here shows that the copper base is fairly shiny and well lapped. One downside I have to point out is that it is not very clean. There were smudges of fingerprints all over the bottom. It can be cleaned off with some Nafta and paper towels but consumers shouldn't have to worry about this--Molex should.
The aluminum fins are neatly spaced out for air to flow through to the bottom and in between the fins. One unique thing about the fins is the folding at the very bottom where it's soldered to the base. This creates more surface area for better heat dissipation.
The Competition:
Today's competition is the Coolermaster HHC-001 Heatpipe. The heatpipe proved itself to be an excellent cooler during our Socket A budget roundup.
The Fan:
The included fan is made by the infamous Delta. The fan specs are as follows:
60mm x 60mm x 15mm
5400 RPM
27.72 CFM
38 dBA
The fan is slim and small. Although spinning at 5400 RPM and producing 38 dBA, the fan is not that loud. The loudness is bearable and should not drive anyone insane.
Note that there are only two screws that hold the fan in place. This I certainly did not like. Using only two screws instead of the usual four does not hold the fan down completely. Rattling occurs and loss of some airflow often occurs. Molex should definitely fix this and use four screws. Screws are cheap aren't they?
Testing:
As always, I test my heat sinks with no case fans to aid in cooling. A temperature probe was used and was placed close enough to touch the CPU core and not cause any interference between the heat sink and the core. A fresh layer of Arctic Silver III was applied. The room temperature was consistent at 20C throughout the entire testing procedures.
Delta 60mm x 60mm x 25mm fan 38 CFM @ 6800 RPM, 46.5dBA
Test Burn-Ins:
SETI (15 minutes)
Sisoft CPU Burn-In (20 loops)
3dmark2k1se (10 loops)
Idle time of 30 minutes
Results:
Concerns:
There were much concerns in the Molex heat sink. The first is the number of screws to hold the fan in place. Using only two is definitely not good enough. It makes the fan rattle. The other concern was the rattling of the shroud. Although this only happened the first time I installed the heat sink, rattling is something that should not happen at all. A firmer hold of the shroud will resolve this problem.
Conclusion:
Should Molex introduce the 37256 series of heat sinks to the overclocking community? My personal opinion would be NO. They are not ready to let their heat sinks go retail when they have a few issues that need to be resolved. Having a heat sink rattle inside a case does not sound good at all. The performance is quite decent as it is rated to cool up to an Athlon XP2100+. The use of the fan is a good choice because it balances out the performance and noise. It's not too loud and doesn't perform too shabby.
Pros/Cons:
Pros:
Small and light, ideal for LAN gamers
Should be fairly cheap (pricing not known yet)
Easy to install
Fairly quiet
Pretty good performance
Cons:
Rattles!
Only has 2 fan screws
Rattles!
Copper base full of finger prints
RATTLES!!!
Rating: 6/10
If you'd like to discuss this look at the Molex offering feel free to head into the forum. Otherwise head back to the front page to check out other GooSH!™ from OCAddiction.com.
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