Buffalo hpfa-10025 AMD CPU cooler Author: cantstraferight -- Posted: 2007-06-16
Today I will be reviewing the Buffalo hpfa-10025 AMD CPU cooler from Evercool.
First impressions
The cooler in its box
When I first saw the box I was amazed how big it was.
I know it was a 10cm fan on it but it didn't cross my mind that it would be big.
The dimensions of the heatsink are 110mm x 72mm x 142.7mm. Because of the hight you might have problems getting this in a small case but you shouldn't have any problems with most tower case.
The cooler next to the stock cooler
The cooler uses a copper base connected to 4 heat pipes which are connected to to the fins.
On top of the cooler is a bull fight design that I really like. And if you have a wind in you case chances are you will be able to see it. Its nice to see a design on a computer part that you will actuly be able to see with you average case window.
The buffalo design
Whats in the box
The cooler
Thermal paste
Installation
The CPU I used the cooler on was a AMD Athlon 64 3500+ socket 939.
Installing this cooler was very very simple. After I had a put some thermal paste on the CPU I just put the heat sinks clips on both sides of the plastic holder and then pulled a leaver to lock it in place. (this is they same way the stock cooler was installed) then connect the power wire to the mobo.
This is probably the easiest ways to install a heatsink as it doesn't require any force to be used.
The cooler installed in the computer.
Noise level
Its not silent but it is defiantly quieter than the stock cooler. Currently the hard drive and the DVD ROM drive are a lot noisier than the CPU cooler. So I don't thing it would bother most people
Performance
Before I removed the stock cooler I done some tests to see what temperatures I got with it. The idle temps were measured when the computer wasn't doing anything and the under load measurements were done while running folding@home. AMD cool n quite was turned off and all other fans other than the CPU, GPU and PSU fans were removed to make sure it was the cooler doing the work and not other fans.
I should say before i get to the results that my CPU gets very hot for an unknown reason and it was a very hot day. So most of the temperatures are going to be a bit high. But what since both both coolers were tested on the same day and with the same CPU its possible to compare them against each other.
Stock cooler results.
As you can see the results were very high. In fact under load it reach 79 degrees Celsius, the cpu is supposed to become unstable after 65 so thats not good.
Once the stock cooler had been tested I moved onto reviewing the Evercool one. (as well as changing the cooler I changed the paste.)
HPFA-10025 results
On the same hot day with the same very hot CPU the HPFA-10025 was able to do a much better job.
Not only did it bring the idle temperatures down over 10 degrees it brought the under load temperatures more than 20 degrees.
So the buffalo HPFA-10025 was able to do a much better job at keeping the CPU temps down than the stock cooler.
Pros and cons
Pros
Much better than stock cooler
Supports all recent AMD CPUs
quite
easy to install
Cons
Very high might not be suitable for smaller cases.
Only computable with AMD CPUs
Overview
I like this cooler if your looking for a new cooler for you AMD CPU I highly recommend it.
If your a Intel person Evercool also make a version of this CPU cooler for Intel CPU's called the
