Akasa AK 925 REVO Thermodynamic

...buy a cleaner such as Akasa TIM £5 from PC World to get all the thermal paste from your CPU and make it spotless. Even a thumb print will reduce the effectiveness of heat conductivity, and you can't use any old cleaner for this purpose.

The verdict:
I am still breaking in silver compound that sits between the heatsink and the CPU, and am told after 200+ hours of computing this will further reduce the temperature by 2-5c. This ...
...there using ASUS Q-fan. The difference with my old heat sink isn't so much the temperature, but the fan speed, which has been reduced by 1000 RPM. The CPU would be cooler, but I have my BIOS running the fan speed to match the temperature, and as the danger temperature is 65c for my Athlon X2, 37-40c seems like a good temperature to keep it at, while keeping the fan down to 1300 rpm. I must note, it is summer and very hot in my room with these tests ... more

I have a very thin ATX case, so noise is heard from the CPU fan. The one that came with my AMD 64 X2 was okay, but had a rattle like a HDD clicking, so it had to go.
I did a lot of looking around for Socket AM2 low noise CPU heat sink/fans and this was where I ended up, because of the relatively new technology (it uses bubble pump) and good specs that I read about I took the plunge.

The first thing you notice is the weight; it has almost none when you judge the bulky size, and is very surprising.
The second thing is the looks. It's not a bad look (if it was on it's side or with the fan on top with an LED fan mounted), but they stress you should mount it with the fan on the bottom, so that the the bubble-pump gravity fed system can be at it's most effective. This makes it look a little hideous if you have a window case with LED's such as I do, but I was striving for less noise more than looks, so decided to follow the advice.

Installation:
This was a breeze for my AMD Socket AM2 board. There is an adapter for Intel also, but I cannot comment on this as it was unused.
One thing worthy of note: If you are replacing a heatsink, you will need to buy a cleaner such as Akasa TIM £5 from PC World to get all the thermal paste from your CPU and make it spotless. Even a thumb print will reduce the effectiveness of heat conductivity, and you can't use any old cleaner for this purpose.

The verdict:
I am still breaking in silver compound that sits between the heatsink and the CPU, and am told after 200+ hours of computing this will further reduce the temperature by 2-5c. This in mind, the CPU remains below 40c and is kept there using ASUS Q-fan. The difference with my old heat sink isn't so much the temperature, but the fan speed, which has been reduced by 1000 RPM. The CPU would be cooler, but I have my BIOS running the fan speed to match the temperature, and as the danger temperature is 65c for my Athlon X2, 37-40c seems like a good temperature to keep it at, while keeping the fan down to 1300 rpm. I must note, it is summer and very hot in my room with these tests (26c), so expect the temperature to drop severely in the winter.

In all, £40 plus £5 to clean off the old thermal compound was painful to give to PC World, but on the whole, I can't hear it, so it passes the test. Buy it if you don't care about looks and want the quietness. I can actually hear my 17db 120cm case fans now. If you want looks and not quietness, there is a "Evo" model to this, which I was contemplating. 

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