Cooler Xtreme : Coolers
: Cpu Cooler : "Galaxy" Cooler
"Galaxy" Cooler
Another Asian mystery-cooler. This
one's got "Galaxy" on the box, so that's what I'll call it.
It's lifted above the ranks
of the usual yum cha coolers by its hefty medium-profile all-copper heat
sink. It's an unremarkable design - ordinary flat thin pins with a quiet
low power fan on top. And there's another one of those trademarks-are-ours-to-play-with
"AMD Thunderbird" stickers on the fan, like the one on the "COOC"
cooler.
The Galaxy heat sink isn't very
well made - the fins are of uneven width, and one of the inner fins either
snapped off half way, or was that way right out of the mould. But quantity
seems to be more important than quality in copper heat sinks, and there's
a decent amount of both copper and fin surface area here.
This cooler's clip is taut,
but not very hard to apply. It has the usual screwdriver-application hooked-end
design, but it's symmetrical - both ends of the clip have hooks, so you
can attach either end first and still be able to screwdriver-push the other
one on. And the heat sink may be questionably made, but the clip is springy
and solid.
The Galaxy performs quite
well, as is normal for pedestrian all-copper designs. It managed 0.70°C/W
with its quiet stock fan. That's very good performance, considering the
standard fan's modest air-moving power.
The fan's held onto the heat
sink with wire clips, not screws, so there's no quick way to attach a thicker,
higher performance model. It'd be worth rigging up some taller clips, though;
when I unclipped the stock fan and just sat my 7.2 watt Y.S. Tech fan on
the Galaxy heat sink, the cooler's performance improved to 0.56°C/W, which
is as good as any cooler in this comparison.
The cheaply made heat sink
this cooler uses didn't make it a super-cheap product. Even in a Hong Kong
street market - where a new Lexus is about ten bucks fifty US - it sold
for $HK170.
If you do manage to find one
cheap, though, buy it.
