Conclusions
As with every Swiftech product I have reviewed, I found both the MCX64-V and MCX6400-V heatsinks to be very well made and of excellent quality. Both coolers were quite easy to install on the AMD K8 platform. Even the larger MCX6400-V is compact enough that it will fit most all of the popular motherboards.
The 80mm Delta fan included with the Swiftech MCX64-V offered very good cooling performance and was quiet even while running at 12 VDC. Using the same fan on the larger MCX6400-V dropped full load temperatures by almost 2ºC. Decreasing the fan voltage to 7V made these coolers nearly silent but also allowed temperatures to climb considerably. Installing a high speed, high flow fan on either of these coolers significantly lowered operating temperatures but increased the noise. The MCX6400-V fitted with the 80mm Sunon Tornado fan produced excellent cooling results but with way more noise than most users will find acceptable.
Swiftech has chosen to stay with a traditional heatsink design, where some of the other high-end, air-cooling solution providers have incorporated heat pipe technology. As a result, the MCX-V series heatsinks are more compact and easier to install than some of the larger heat pipe coolers. The MCX6400-V produced results equal to or better than most of the other K8 coolers I have tested. Only the Hyper 6 and XP-120 heatsinks were able to produce better cooling performance to noise ratios than the Swiftech MCX6400-V.
If your application demands more extreme cooling, Swiftech also manufactures a full line of waterblocks, water-cooling kits and even Peltier (TEC) coolers!
Both the MCX64-V and MCX6400-V are available from your favorite Swiftech retailer or can be ordered directly from the Swiftech website. The MSRP for these two coolers is $51.95 for the MCX64-V and $54.95 for the larger MCX6400-V. I would like to thank our good friends at Swiftech for sending us two of their latest air-cooled heatsinks to review. Thank you!
