Introduction and System Setup
The Silver Mountain Heatsink Review
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
A couple of weeks back; I received an international telephone call from Adrian Young of Lapicon Electronics Ltd. in the UK. He asked me a magical question, he already knew the answer, “would I be interested in testing and reviewing a new HSF called the Silver Mountain” as he continued to speak, my interest rose and rose and rose again as he explained that the Silver Mountain is an all copper heatsink that has been prepared for a Silver Plated (coated) exterior finish. Not just a Silver disc, but the entire HSF Silver coated. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity!!!The picture above is of the Silver Mountain HSF in all its shinning glory, it was extremely difficult to take photos of, the glare from the brightness being the culprit. So, don’t be surprised by the low number of pictures in this review. I normally like to include four or more. I used four different cameras with varying degrees of success; I’ve chosen the best of the more than 60 pictures I took.
You might ask, why Silver?? If you look at a chart of metal properties, you’ll find Silver up near the top of the list when it comes to heat dispersal. But why apply it to this particular heatsink that resembles (to some degree) the Hedgehog?? Similar to its look-a-like, the slats (for lack of a better term, they are not pins or fins, but remind me of the wooden slats found in plastered walls) are fairly thin and are press fitted to the base under tons of pressure. Silver flows very evenly and fills any gaps left by the assembly process, leaving NO areas for heat to build up. OK, I’m getting ahead of myself; I better stop here and give you the obligatory system and test information.
The test system we used is exactly the same as used in our previous reviews; a high performance well cooled Athlon 1.2 GHz 266 FSB AXIA CPU, on an Abit KT7A-Raid motherboard housed in a closed aluminum Lian-Li PC-10 mid-tower case.
The test were run for four consecutive days, 50 temperature readings were taken per day using a combination of Award Bios, Via Hardware Monitor and the DigitalDoc5. Room temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit or 23 degrees Celsius was maintained during testing +/- four tenths of a degree. The high and low temperatures for each day were discarded as is our practice. The software used in our study consisted of business and accounting applications, a varied combination of utilities, AutoCAD Lite, graphic intensive packages including N-Bench, 3D games, surfing the net and burning CD’s.
Please note; our interest lay in achieving the best overall performance we can attain, noise is not an issue, to this end we use the 60mm Delta 37 CFM 46.5 dBA fan. Because we use an extremely well cooled system in a controlled environment you might not be able to attain the same results, due to the variables found between systems.
Our reviews are meant to be source of information and guides to help you discern what’s best for you; they are not intended to be gospel.
