A Closer Look (Cont’d)
Removing four screws allows the fan to be lifted off, which exposes the top deck of the aluminum fins. As you can see, there are 66 tightly spaced thin fins, which helps maximize the available surface area for heat dissipation. The fin assembly is covered on three sides with an aluminum shroud that provides mounting pads for the fan and shows off the Ultra-X name.
Enzotech uses four heat pipes to efficiently transport heat out of the Ultra-X base and up into the fin array. The copper heat pipes are 8mm in diameter, which is slightly larger than what most heatsink manufacturers are using (typically 5~6mm). This may not sound like much, but a small increase in diameter results in a larger increase in surface area (3.14 x as much). This translates to an increased contact area in the base plate and aluminum fins, which optimizes heat transfer and results in better overall cooling performance.
The bottom end of the heat pipes are sandwiched between a pure copper base plate and an aluminum heatsink. The heat pipes are also soldered to the copper base for efficient heat transfer. This design helps optimize heat transfer out of the base.
The precision machined copper base of the Ultra-X exhibits a mirror finish and appears to be very flat.
Enzotech includes two sets of mounting hardware with the Ultra-X. The clip and two-piece retention frame on the left are for use with AMD processors (K8/AM2/754/739/940) and the hardware on the right is for Intel LGA775 CPUs.
