Cooler Xtreme : Coolers
: Cpu Cooler : Spire 5P53B3
Spire 5P53B3
The 5P53B3 continues Spire's proud
tradition of Immemorable Cooler Names, but at least this one looks unusual.
It's an all-copper folded fin design - its fins are made out of a thin copper
sheet, folded back and forth and bonded to the base wherever it touches.
You don't get a ton of surface area that way, but you don't have to do any
annoying copper forging, either, and the hollow folded fins presumably work
a little better than solid ones the same size would.
It seems fairly obvious that this
cooler's got a better heat sink than the aluminium-sinked Spires, and it's
got the same nice clip, but for some reason it's got the lousiest fan. That's
a very unassuming little 50mm unit perched on top of the shiny copper, there,
and it's...
Well, it's quiet. Definitely
quiet.
Doesn't work too well, though.
With the standard fan, the 5P53B3
managed a thoroughly unexciting 0.74°C/W. That's actually pretty good for
a cooler with so little air flow, and it promised rather more with better
fan power. So I stuck my high-power Y.S. Tech fan onto the heat sink (with
blobs of stickum, because the mounting holes don't line up...). Now, the
5P53B3 scored 0.62°C/W. Which isn't quite as good as the copper-based aluminium
5E34B3, with the same fan.
Upgrading a 5P53B3 with a more powerful
fan will require you to use a bead of silicone or similar goop to hold the
fan on, if you don't want to drill new mounting holes. So it's not really
worth doing.
Folded fins just aren't a great
design, I'm afraid. If I had to make my own heat sink, folded fins are what
I'd use, because I could whip up a sink like that in my workshop without
having to learn to cast copper. But cast sinks can have more surface area
per unit volume, and they work better.
The 5P53B3 isn't rubbish, and its
perforated surround looks groovy. And I really like the clip that all of
these Spire coolers use. But it's neither a great performer in stock trim,
nor an easy upgrade candidate.
