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The SLK-800 is built of 34 fins (500 µm wall thickness and 1 mm apart from each other) soldered to a pyramidal core recessed in the center to accomodate the clip. The base of this core is the structure that makes contact with the CPU and serves as the original heatsink with enough thermal capacitance of buffer any heat spikes. As shown in the earlier pictures, the base is very narrow, that is 25 mmm only, which causes the SLK-800 to be mostly open at the bottom. The wedge-shaped core acts like a spoiler to redirect the airflow away from the center which is the dead zone of the fan anyway.

Comparison of a standard design (hybrid aluminum-copper core) with the Thermalright SLK-800. In the standard design, the fins form an enclosure around the gaps with openings mostly to the front and back only (unless a cross hatch pattern is used). This causes a relatively high flow resistence with most of the air not even reaching the bottom of the fins. The SLK-800 does not face this problem, the air goes right through the entire assembly. In the conventional design, only the processor core itself is cooled. With the SLK-800, the entire package is exposed to airflow and, therefore is used as extended heat spreader for the core. This, of course, will also alter the temperature reading within the socket in that the delta between core temperature and measured socket temperature will be higher. In other words, with any temperature probe that measures ambient temperature inside the socket, the SLK-800 will look better than it actually is but that is only for the record. Actually, a similar point can be made for shims.

Mounting

The Thermalright SLK-800 uses a three-pronged heatsink clip, anything else would be an anachronism for this kind of cooler. The tension of the spring is a bit high and engaging the clip requires the use of a screwdriver which is the only drawback we found. This drawback only applies in the case of mainboards with the CPU socket in North-south orientation and limited clearance towards the power supply which is the majority of all boards but that is not the fault of Thermalright.

Unusual as well is the mounting of the fan. The SLK800 can accomodate a variety of different fans, which means different in diameter or height. The top of the HS is recessed in three steps with a clearance of 64, 70 and 80 mm across to fit 60, 70 and 80 mm fans.

                    

Click pictures for larger view and detailed captions

As shown in the pictures above, the SLK-800 features four different holes for the spring steel clips that hold the fan in place. Which holes need to be used depends on the fan used but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out. A dry run before installing the HS in the system is recommended, though. The final installation of the fan is as simple as placing the fan in the appropriate groove and pulling the clip over it so that the little bows drop into the screw holes.

Performance

We used the SLK-800 in the ASUS A7N8X with the AMD XP2800+ which is certainly no weenie when it comes to heat dissipation. In all instances, we were running an "Open Case" setup. We tried different fans, starting with an "Innovative" 80 mm 2500 rpm, an Antec 80 mm case fan and finally settling on a Sunon fan running at 3600 rpm. Except for the Antec fan, we have no technical specs since all fans used came basically from some junk. Suffice it to say that the performance of the SLK800 has been proven in quite a few reviews. Moreover, we would feel uncomfortable to post comparative results from one HSF to another without knowing exactly the impact of the package cooling on the temperatures measured by either BIOS or ASUS probe.

There are two things we can and would like to say:

• Temperatures: Compared to the Taisol CGK760172 that showed idle temperatures around 40 centigrades in the same setup, the SLK-800 was averaging around 30-32 centigrades at idle. Runing more extravagant benchmarks like SPEC ViewPERF or 3Dmark2001SE caused the temperatures to shoot up to 34 centigrades.
• Noise Levels: Temperature control using air cooling is always a trade off between temperature and noise. dB or Sones are metrics to define results, our metric was much simpler but we feel that it is as relevant as any other. What we did was using two different power supplies, that is a Sparkle 300W and an Antec Smart Power PSU. The result in this setup was that with the Sparkle PSU, it was not possible to hear a difference between the fan running or stopped (manually), with the Antec PSU, it was possible to hear the fan with the case open. We could elaborate but, really that is all there is to it, either you hear it or you don't and if we need numbers to make our point, then our point is not strong enough to come across without them. We feel that it is, though.

The only HSF combo we have seen so far that performs better in terms of temperature control is the Swiftech MCX462 with an 80 cfm fan but that one also blows out your eardrums. Bottom line is that the SLK-800 is a piece of art with respect to its esthetics, design and performance likewise and deserves nothing less than an editor's choice, a very rare thing around here.

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