Few things are more important than
keeping your computer well ventilated and cool. Overheating can lead
to your computer turning off on you, sluggish work and worst of all,
damaged hardware. One of the principal parts to keep cool is the
CPU, using a high-quality CPU cooler that will throw away the heat
your CPU generates. Today, I’ve got a great cooler up for review –
Arctic Cooling’s Alpine 64 Pro cooler. While the Alpine 64 Pro
presents itself as a very straightforward looking extruded aluminum
heatsink, it has a lot of high quality components and design aspects
that make it a very effective device for sufficient cooling and very
low noise production.
That’s what the Alpine 64 Pro is all
about – dispersing the heat and minimizing buzz noise.
Product
Name: Arctic
Cooling Alpine 64 Pro CPU Cooler
Author: Jeff
Saporito
Sponsor: Arctic
Cooling
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Arctic
Cooling Alpine 64 Pro CPU Cooler
Quiet
Cooling Solution for AMD CPUs
Alpine
64 Pro offers
outstanding price/performance ratio for mainstream users
Main
features
•Ultra
quiet 92mm PWM fan with low noise impeller
•Optimised heatsink
efficient heat dissipation
•Patented fan holder eliminates the
buzzing sounds
•Patented vibration absorption
•Pre-applied
MX-2
•Easy installation
Enjoy
quiet cooling at a reasonable price
The Alpine
64 Pro features a lot of high standard components. The 92mm fan comes with
PWM function, which controls the fan speed, and thus, lowers the
noise level to a minimum according to the CPU load. The PWM function
guarantees sufficient cooling at the lowest noise level possible and
saves energy simultaneously. Together with the patented fan case, low
noise impeller and the vibration absorption, the Alpine
64 Pro is as quiet as 0.4 Sone at full speed (2,000 rpm).
Apart from
the PWM fan, the Alpine
64 Pro also features an optimised heatsink and extremely low resistance
thermal compound MX-2 for efficient heat dissipation from the core.
The above high quality components offer excellent thermal and noise
control management. Without a doubt, the Alpine
64 Pro is one of the most cost-efficient cooler of its class.
Easy
installation
With
the user-friendly design, the Alpine
64 Pro can be installed within seconds. Remove the standard cooler, place
the Alpine
64 Pro on the CPU, lock two lugs with the retention module, and you are
ready to enjoy the quietness brought by this cooler.
Application:
AMD
Socket AM3, AM2+, AM2, 939
MSRP
(excl. VAT):
10,90
€ / US$ 15.50
Specs:
Heatsink 105.3
L x 113.4 W x 84 H mm
Fan 92mm
x 1
Fan
speed 500
-2000 RPM (Controlled by PWM)
Air
flow 36.7CFM
/ 62.2 m3/h
Maximum
Cooling Capacity 90
Watts
Weight 428g
Patents DE
20307981, DE 202005011514
US 7101149, CN 200610106209
Warranty 6
year
A
Better Look at Things:
The Alpine 64 Pro comes in a
rather plain box, as do many Arctic Cooling coolers. A few pictures
and lots of facts don the carton, telling you just about everything
you could possibly need to know about a cpu cooler.
The cooler sits in a small plastic
tray inside the box, adding protection and keeping safe the square of
MX-2 thermal paste that is pre-applied. There are no bags of parts
or mounting tools, because this cooler doesn’t use any. The only
other thing inside is a small manual/fact sheet document.
The Alpine 64 Pro’s 92mm fan
operates at 2,000rpm. The fan is poised on top of rubber posts that
are meant to absorb vibration and not thus not rattle on other parts
of the chassis. This means the fan is actually built onto the
plastic part of the cooler and isn’t directly attached to the
heatsink, but is suspended above it via the dual axial posts. This
is an awesome tactic for keeping this fan quiet when running, and it
works very well. The rubber mounts are great at absorbing vibrations
and quelling potential errant noise. The rubber seems solid enough
to hold up over time.
One other unique aspect to this
cooler is the method of attachment. There is no middle clamp
mechanism going through the center of the heatsink. Most stock AMD
heatsinks have that rotating lever running through the middle of the
cooler that locks into the CPU frame. Those types of mechanisms put
a big open space in the middle of the heatsink, sort of wasting space
right at the hottest place on the object. The Alpine 64 Pro instead
has two steel clips on the sides of the heatsink that snap around
your support frame. You then tighten two small machine screws
located on the top of the unit to lock it in place. It’s a tight fit
and allows the heatsink to be a solid object that has full connection
with the object it is attempting to cool. Smart and cost effective.
The fan is powered by your every
day 3 pin motherboard connection.
Air is brought in through the fan,
blown down to the aluminum fins, and sent out the sides of the
heatsink.
Another thing you will notice
about this cooler is the roughness of the metal. This is an
intentional design that is supposed to enhance thermal transfer.
Most heatsinks have a very polished look, but the Alpine 64 Pro’s
finish is rather rigid.
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
Installation
was no problem and the cooler attached just as it is meant to. It is
larger than the stock cooler that I replaced, but the clips fit right
over the mounting bracket and it simply screwed into place,
tightening itself to the CPU. The first two pictures show the
original stock cooler and then the bare processor, followed by the
installed Alpine 64 Pro. It was installed on top of a AMD
Phenom II X2 545 Callisto 3.0GHz chip on a GIGABYTE 785G Micro ATX Motherboard.
The cooler fits well and doesn’t
particularly intrude upon any other hardware. You can see it comes
pretty close to the left stick of RAM, but this shouldn’t be a
problem.
For testing, I used Prime95 to
achieve load for around a half hour on both the stock cooler and the
Alpine 64 Pro. The temperatures listed reflect average idle temps
and average load temps during the Prime95 stress test. The
temperature in the testing environment is a little high, so the idle
temps are both slightly high from what they potentially could be.
Idle:
Alpine 64 Pro: 30-32
Stock: 31-32c
Load:
Alpine 64 Pro: 43-44c
Stock: 46-48c
Compared
to the review of the Alpine 64 (non-Pro version) we did in early
August,
(http://www.dragonsteelmods.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5668&Itemid=38),
the numbers are similar though the tests were run in different
machines. The highest temp the Alpine 64 Pro touched during the test
was 47c and it was only for a second. It generally hung around 44c
for the bulk of the procedure when both cores were running at 100%
load.
During normal computer usage, the
temperature remains around the idle temps. Even after playing an
hour of Bioshock with other programs running in the background, the
temperature was only up a couple degrees.
The quick verdict is that this
cooler does a more efficient job of cooling. It also does so with
far less noise.
Summary
and Comments:
This cooler is a re-imagining of
the standard coolers we’ve grown used to over the years. It takes
classic cooler architecture and adds some unique, ingenious touches
to produce a piece of hardware that is very cheap and functions
better than expected.
If noise is an issue for you, this
is definitely a cooler that will make you happy. The fan design and
rubber mountings make this thing nearly silent, even when running at
full capacity under heavy load. The sound increase is undetectable
unless you are really straining to hear it.
The heatsink’s rough metal
shows that you don’t need perfect smoothness for good thermal
transfer, as the cooler does a great job at throwing away heat and
keeping the CPU running at a comfortable temperature. For an
inexpensive aluminum heatsink cooler, this thing is tops.
DragonSteelMods gives the Arctic
Cooling Alpine 64 Pro CPU Cooler a 5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Super quiet
+Efficient cooling
+Very easy to install
+Unique rubber-mounted floating
fan design
Cons:
-None
I
would like to thank Arctic
Cooling for the chance to review the Alpine
64 Pro and for their support of DSM.
review# 609