Heat pipes

[Hampton]

I was checking into liquid coolers when I ran accross a heatsink that had Heatpipes, the reviews that I read were all pretty positive saying that it worked well, lowering the temps on the cpu by 10% on average and they seemed very inexpensive compared to most quality heatsinks.

any thoughts?

 

[eyeCpc]

Those are generally called heat tubes. You'll see those on a good number of 3rd party coolers. The Silverstone cooler seen at the link here emphasizes heat pipes. Newegg.com - SILVERSTONE NT01-E 2 x 60mm fans (optional) CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

The higher priced Zalman models see a large copper array as well as a few heat pipes. The original $75 retail tag has seen quite a reduction lately for the CNPS9700 model now sold for only a few dollars more. Newegg.com - ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

 

[aspire]

Those are generally called heat tubes. You'll see those on a good number of 3rd party coolers. The Silverstone cooler seen at the link here emphasizes heat pipes. Newegg.com - SILVERSTONE NT01-E 2 x 60mm fans (optional) CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

The higher priced Zalman models see a large copper array as well as a few heat pipes. The original $75 retail tag has seen quite a reduction lately for the CNPS9700 model now sold for only a few dollars more. Newegg.com - ZALMAN CNPS9700 LED 110mm 2 Ball CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks

Um... nope, they are almost exclusively referred to as Heatpipes...

Heatpipes are simply a sealed copper tube with a substance inside that when heated turns to a gas and moves from the lower end of the tube to the higher end (gas rises) this in turn transfers all the heat needed to turn it from liquid to gas to the other end of the heatpipe resulting in a very efficient method of moving heat from one point to another.

Now to the OP. Most heatsinks designed for the enthusiast market today utilize heatpipes are they are the only way some of the large tower heatsinks could work practically. Without them the heat would never reach the upper areas of the heatsink.

Heatpipes are not in the same league as a real water cooling loop. There is no air cooler on the market that offers the same performance numbers as a decent water cooling loop.

 

[Hampton]

Well the price for a decent water/liquid cool system seems out of reach for my budget so when I saw how well the heatpipe coolers worked I was sold.

Just wanted some input from the gurus here on wich one would be best for my AM2+ system

 

[Peter.Cort]

a sunbeam core contact cooler offers the best bang for your buck cooling now i believe.

 

[saltynay]

What is the budget and your planned build? Its not really cost effective to go with amd atm intel whoops them for any budget above $115 for the mobo/cpu

 

[Hampton]

ah, yea had I known that a MB upgrade was going to turn into an entire rebuild I would have went intel, but I was hoping just a MB was all I was going to need, a bad GPU as it turned out after I bought PSU (OCZ-600), MB (M3N72-D) only to figure out it was a bad Evga 8500GT PCI-e that locked up my system (no fans no post) so now I'm stuck with finishing the build AMD and Nvidia :freak:

 

[eyeCpc]

Not a bad board at all. ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

You should be able to work with that well enough.