ARKUA 628 Heatsink
Arkua have sent us their latest cooler, the ARKUA-628, designed for Socket A / Socket 370. This is the quiet model of the ARKUA-6228, as this model has a slower and smaller fan. It uses an Evercool 60x60x20 (W,D,H) fan, which spins at 5000 RPM and pushes about 24CFM. Let's have a look at it. As some of you will recognise, this is basically a ThermoEngine cooler.
You'll notice the black ducting around the cooler. This is in place to direct air down as far as possible over the fins of the heatsink, minimising air coming straight out of the side of the heatsink unit, and thus not aiding cooling. The ducting also neatly hides the screws that are used to attach the fan unit to the heatsink itself. Also on the ducting is written "ARKUA Cooler". Not important really, but worth a mention.
Like the Taisol 760 and a few other coolers, this cooler incorporates the Copper base idea. Copper is a very good conductor of heat, and so the idea is that the heat will be passed through into the Aluminium Alloy heatsink more efficiently, making the cooler's overall performance better. The copper on this cooler is a central 'slug' and extends quite a way up into the cooler as we'll see later.
ARKUA have used the 'ridged' fin design in this heatsink which inceases the surface area of the heatsink, giving better cooling performance. As you can see in the image below, the ridges can sometimes be a little inconsistent. I'm sure that this feature does aid the cooler in some way, but I don't feel it can actually make a large difference to how it performs.
Incorporated into the design, we have a large 'hole' that has been machined into the top of the heatsink. As far as I know, this feature is in place to try to reduce the 'dead spot' created by the fan's motor. Also, the copper core is exposed to air pushed by the fan. You can see the copper core directly in these images. You may notice some 'damage' to the top of the copper core -- I'm not sure what's happened here, but I assume it's something to do with the process of machining or inserting the core.
The clip on the heatsink is pretty standard. It has a nice mechanism to place the screwdriver into for fitting, ensuring that you can't slip and damage your montherboard. The clip is a one lug fitting type, unlike Taisol clips that fit over all the lugs on the CPU socket. The clip has had to be designed to fit around the copper core, and so it has a raised bit. One good feature that I have identified from this is that pressure is applied directly to the core on the processor, meaning that the pressure is centered and won't be unequal.