Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink<base href="http://www.atruereview.com/" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.atruereview.com/images/favicon.ico" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> <link href="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/css/template_css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/css/style10.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/slimbox/slimbox.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <link href="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/css/rokmoomenu.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.atruereview.com/images/favicon.ico" /> <style type="text/css"> td.left div.moduletable, td.right div.moduletable, td.left div.moduletable-hilite1, td.right div.moduletable-hilite1, td.left div.moduletable-hilite2, td.right div.moduletable-hilite2, td.left div.moduletable-hilite3, td.right div.moduletable-hilite3, td.left div.moduletable-hilite4, td.right div.moduletable-hilite4, td.left div.moduletable-hilite5, td.right div.moduletable-hilite5, td.left div.moduletable-hilite6, td.right div.moduletable-hilite6, td.left div.moduletable-hilite7, td.right div.moduletable-hilite7, td.left div.moduletable-hilite8, td.right div.moduletable-hilite8 { width: 175px; } div.wrapper { margin: 0 auto; width: 868px;} </style> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/js/mootools.r462.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/js/roktools.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/js/mootools.bgiframe.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/js/rokmoomenu.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> window.addEvent('domready', function() { new rokmoomenu($E('ul.nav'), { bgiframe: false, delay: 500, animate: { props: ['opacity', 'width', 'height'], opts: { duration:400, fps: 100, transition: Fx.Transitions.sineOut } } }); }); </script> </head> <body id="page_bg" class="f-default"> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.atruereview.com/templates/rt_versatility_iii/js/slimbox.js"></script> <div id="fxContainer"> <div id="fxTarget"> <div id="fxPadding" class="wrapper"> </div> </div>  </div> <div id="template" class="wrapper"> <div id="header"> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com" class="nounder"><img src="http://www.atruereview.com/images/blank.png" style="border:0;" alt="" id="logo" /></a> <div id="banner"> <div class="padding"> <form action="index.php?option=com_search&Itemid=5" method="get"> <div class="searchroflmao"> <input name="searchword" id="mod_search_searchword" maxlength="20" alt="search" class="inputboxroflmao" type="text" size="20" value="search..." onblur="if(this.value=='') this.value='search...';" onfocus="if(this.value=='search...') this.value='';" /> </div> <input type="hidden" name="option" value="com_search" /> <input type="hidden" name="Itemid" value="5" /> </form> </div> </div> </div> <div id="horiz-menu" class="moomenu"> <ul class="nav"> <li><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/">Home</a></li> <li><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/search.html">Search</a></li> <li><a href="http://atruereview.com/oldrev.php">Old Reviews</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.atruereview.com/atruereview/articles.php">Old Articles</a></li> <li><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/contact/contact.html">Contact</a></li> <li><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/links/links.html">Links</a></li> <li><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/accessories/2.html">Reviews</a></li> </ul> </div> <div id="top"> </div> <div class="clr" id="mainbody"> <table class="mainbody" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr valign="top"> <td class="left"> <div class="moduletable"> <h3> Main Menu </h3> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr align="left"><td><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/" class="mainlevel" >Home</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/search.html" class="mainlevel" >Search</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><a href="http://atruereview.com/oldrev.php" class="mainlevel" >Old Reviews</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><a href="http://www.atruereview.com/atruereview/articles.php" class="mainlevel" >Old Articles</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/contact/contact.html" class="mainlevel" >Contact</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/links/links.html" class="mainlevel" >Links</a></td></tr> <tr align="left"><td><br /> <b>Warning</b>: array_search() [<a href='function.array-search'>function.array-search</a>]: Wrong datatype for second argument in <b>/home/atruerev/public_html/components/com_sef/sef.cache.php</b> on line <b>228</b><br /> <a href="http://www.atruereview.com/accessories/2.html" class="mainlevel" >Reviews</a></td></tr> </table> </div> <div class="moduletable"> </div> </td> <td class="mainbody"> <table class="sections" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr valign="top"> <td class="section w99"> <div class="moduletable"> </div> </td> </tr> </table> <div class="padding"> <h2 align="center"> <?php include '../banner.php' ?> </h2> <h2 align="center">Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink (cont.)</h2> <p align="left"> <strong>Installation:</strong></p> <p align="left"> I first applied the heatsink compound. The syringe design of the bottle is a good design, better than toothpaste style bottles. </p> <p align="left">Because of the tapered design, mounting the heatsink was very difficult. Getting the first clip to secure was very time consuming; that’s suppose to be the easier of the two. </p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/gcrown/5gcrown.jpg"><img src="atruereview/gcrown/5gcrownth.jpg" alt="Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink" border="0" width="210" height="275"></a><br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left">The difficulty was not all because of the heatsink though. The capacitors on my motherboard are also to blame, for they were too close. Therefore, beware if your CPU socket is surrounded by capacitors. After many tries, I finally got it to hook. Hooking the other latch required removing a stick or RAM and a standard screwdriver. If your memory is not located close to the CPU, you do not have to remove your memory. After jabbing my motherboard many times, I finally got the heatsink mounted.</p> <p align="center"><a href="atruereview/gcrown/6gcrown.jpg"><img src="atruereview/gcrown/6gcrownth.jpg" alt="Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink" border="0" width="275" height="159"></a><br> <font size="-1">Click on image for larger picture</font> </p> <p align="left"><strong>Testing:</strong></p> <p align="left">I will test the Golden Crown against my Zalman 3100+ CNPS. The test unit is an AMD 2400+ (2.0 GHZ) OC’d to 2.20GHz on an ECS K7S5A Pro.</p> <p align="left"> For the first Idle time, I turned the computer on and waited for five minutes. For the Load, I ran Sandra’s Burn-In Wizard (CPU Arithmetic and Multi-Media Benchmarks only) ten times and recorded the temperature of the last test. I than waited five more minutes for the second Idle time. All temps are in Celsius. The room temp was 22C.</p> <p align="left"><strong>Results:</strong><br> </p> <p align="center"><img src="atruereview/gcrown/graph.gif" alt="Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink" border="0" width="364" height="216"></p> <p align="left">As you can see, you can’t judge a book by its cover. This heatsink is a performer. It has a wider temperature range than the 3100+ CNPS, but every temp is significantly lower. The Golden Crown idles 3-4 degrees lower, and though close, it is still one degree lower during load. </p> <p align="left">Temperatures aside, this fan looks awesome when it is on, especially in the dark. It runs very quietly and could not be heard over case fans.</p> <p align="center"><img src="atruereview/gcrown/7gcrownth.jpg" alt="Aerocool Golden Crown Heat Sink" border="0" width="275" height="226"></p> <p align="left"> <strong>Conclusion:</strong></p> <p align="left">If I saw this heatsink for the first time at the store, I would not have purchased it. Looks can be, and in this case are, deceiving. Though this is not one of Aerocool’s fancier looking heatsinks, it still performs with the best of them while being very quite. Based on the temperature results, I would say the Golden Crown is a good heatsink for light overclocking. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to ditch their stock coolers for a better looking and performing cooler.</p> <p align="left"><strong>Pros:</strong></p> <ul> <li> Cools really well</li> <li> Quiet</li> <li>Four color LED on fan</li> <li>Lightweight</li> <li>Not very expensive</li> </ul> <p><strong>Cons:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Horrid packaging</li> <li>Difficult installation</li> </ul> <p><strong>Rating:</strong></p> <table width="227" border="0"> <tr> <td width="105">Overall:</td> <td width="183">Very Good</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Performance:</td> <td>Very Good</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Installation: </td> <td>Fair</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Price: </td> <td>Good</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Packaging:</td> <td>Very Bad</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Compatibility: </td> <td>Very Good</td> </tr> </table> <p>(Ratings Possible: Terrible, Very Bad, Bad, Fair, Good, Very Good, Excellent)<br> </p> <p align="left"><a href="atruereview/gcrown/index.php"></a> <a href="gcrown/index.php">Previous (Introduction & Specifications)</a></p> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </div> <div id="footer" class="clr"> <div class="rk-1"> <div class="rk-2"> <div id="the-footer">  </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html>