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Microcool NorthPole Northbridge Cooler Review

Author: Dennis Garcia

When testing a chipset cooler a number of problems present themselves, the obvious one is how do you capture accurate temperature measurements? Since there is no built in thermal monitoring a BIOS reading is out of the question and thermal probes are difficult to place without affecting the coolers performance. The only thing left would be a subjective overclocking stability test while using the finger method for temperature recording.

Pentium 4 2.4C @ 285Mhz FSB (3.4Ghz)
DFI LanParty Pro875B
DangerDen RBX
ATI 9600XT

Keep in mind that since a watercooler is being used on this system there is no ambient air movement from a nearby CPU fan.

The testing was simple, basically after 30min of FarCry an index finger was placed on the cooler to register the temperature. To reaffirm the reading a handy dandy IR thermometer was used directly after. As you can guess the stock heatsink (without fan) was very hot to the touch and actually caused the game to crash on a number of occasions. With the NorthPole cooler the heatsink temperature was not evident to the touch and the games stability improved over 100%. Based on this I'd say the cooler worked quite well.

I am actually quite impressed with the Microcool NorthPole, the heatsink is a well made skived copper cooler and decent sized, though loud, cooling fan. On the bright side the fan is replaceable and there are ways to turn the volume down, so to speak.
The included ChipSinks are a great addition though they have a fundamental "flaw". As you can guess the ChipSinks come with a very flat base. This is normally a good thing but Southbridge chips, Mosfets, and other electronic parts do not so getting a good thermally responsive bond virtually impossible.

Now for the ever popular list of Good things and Bad things.

Skived fin design
Full shroud
Hook adaptor kit
Nice sized fan
Chipcoolers in various sizes.

Heatsink is rather heavy
Anti-Crush pads very spongy
Fan is loud

I would like to thank Microcool for helping to make this review possible.

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