Passive Cooling Heatsinks and the Heatlane Zen - Conclusion

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Pros

• Silent cooling on whatever component you install a passive cooler upon
• Large surface area provides great heat dissipation
• Performance is increased considerably by placing a 120mm fan on the heatsink.
• Heatsink can allow higher clockspeeds if proper ventilation is provided
• Current generation passive coolers provide considerably better cooling that the last generation passive coolers.

Cons

• Increase in temperature during nominal use
• Performance relies largely on case ventilation.
• Compatibility issues may prevent installation on some motherboards.
• Some passive coolers have a limit of clockspeeds, so check the maximum operating speed, or maximum heat output.
• Passive coolers must be orientated in a certain direction in order to ensure airflow thru the fins and to be sure the heatpipe performs correctly.

I would like to thank everyone for reading our article on passive coolers. Hopefully it has informed some on how heatpipes work and how passive coolers work. I recommend passive coolers only to those who are concerned with any acoustic noise from fans, especially those who are not concerned with maintaining high overclocks or low temperatures. Just the fact that passive coolers lack fans makes them perfect for a silent system. Most regular desktop users may want too look into passive coolers with an optional low RPM 120mm fans to provide minimal airflow for the processor in order to aid convection.

As always, I’d like to encourage everyone to check out our forums and would like to thank you for joining us at devhardware and hope you look forward to reading out next reviews.

DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware.

Comments On: Passive Cooling Heatsinks and the Heatlane Zen

· Very impressive heatsink. That thing is massive. I've always liked passive cooling...    · Would this heatsink be enough to keep my AMD 1.47G processor cool?    · It would have no problems cooling your AMD processor. the only thing is that it...   >>> Post your comment now!

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