While I get ready for my busy summer, with the kids running around the house and looking to spend some time away from work, I was able to sneak down into my home grown computer lab and check out the "Silent Whisper" that CrazyPC sent over.

It seems like the new trend for heatsink design is a high rise tower utilizing heat pipes for moving the heat away from the CPU. This particular HSF utilizes this same principal and comes in two versions: one for the Intel LGA 775 and one for AMD K8 CPUs. Today I'll be testing the K8 version in one of my Socket 939 machines. Let’s look at what I received.

The back of the box listed all of the information provided by the manufacturer about the CPU Cooler.

Features:

	775 Version	K8 Version
Fan Speed	1000-2300 PWM Controlled	1800 RPM
Weight	512 g	504 g
Socket Type	LGA 775	Socket 754 / 939 / 940
Application	Intel Pentium 4 All frequencies	AMD Sempron (Socket 754) AMD Athlon 64 all frequencied AMD Opteron all frequencies
Bearing Type	Ceramic Shaft and Bearing	Ceramic Shaft and Bearing

Performance:

	Thermal Resistance	Noise Level
Silent Whisper 775 Version	0.19	25 DBA
Intel Stock Cooler	0.26	34 DBA
Silent Whisper K8 Version	0.20	23 DBA
AMD Stock Cooler	0.34	34 DBA

As usual there are a few misspellings I wanted to fix, but that is the exact information provided by Sunbeam.

Now that we've covered the manufacturer's information, let's look at the heatsink itself. It is held in the box with 2 pieces of plastic that is shaped around the entire unit. This is very similar to the way I get a lot of my compact fluorescent bulbs for my light box. The packaging does a good job of keeping things from moving around during shipping and keeps the aluminum fins from bending.

In the past I've had problems with HSFs that had too short power cables to reach the CPU1 plug easily. Fortunately, this isn't a problem for this one, as it was able to reach it with room to spare.

A side view gives you a better look at the fins on the HS and shows the heat pipes running up and down. Sunbeam alternated what side they put the closing crimp and soldered the Heat pipes closed for a balanced look.

The footprint of the HS is close to the same size as the CPU chip cover plate. It also uses the default retaining brackets that come with all Socket 939 motherboards, so you do not have to remove anything besides the stock HS to get this fan attached and running on your system. The heatsink also comes with the thermal paste already on the block. This is good for a beginner that doesn't know much about thermal interface material or how to apply it, but in my case I cleaned it off and replaced it with Arctic Silver 5.