Kingwin Revolution RVT-12025D Heatsink: A quick review

Aah, Kingwin..... or more like AAH!!! KINGWIN!!!! Or so I thought, until just today.

You see, I bought this cooler on Newegg about 8 months ago for $18, when they still carried it. Pretty cheap for a heatsink. It got mixed reviews. Some say that the heat pipes aren't wicked, so you have to attach it with the pipes facing upward. Some say that it's just a plain out piece of junk. Others say that it's great. For the past many months since I bought it, I was one of the people who thought it was a piece of junk. Today, I slightly changed my mind

1. Physical Description

The RVT-12025D isn't a small heatsink. It's definitely necessary to pull the power supply out of your case when you install it. It's got 4 heatpipes that run directly up to its cooling fins. This doesn't translate into the usual six heatpipe-paths of a standard tower heatsink with 3 heatpipes. This heatsink contains 4 pipes, with exactly 4 paths for the heat to go (remember this for later). Installing the heatsink is a bit of a pain, since it has the stupid LGA775 pushpins, but you'll eventually get it in there stable.

2. Cooling Performance

I don't have any exact numbers, but I can say this:

With my Pentium 4 520 @ ~3.7GHz, 1.55v, this thing was awful. A bit better than the Intel heatsink at idle, but about the same at load. Not worth $18.

BUT, with my Celeron D 356 ES @ 4.5GHz, 1.5v, it's quite nice. It kept the CPU in the mid 60s Celsius under full load. I only just tested it with this CPU today, having used a different heatsink (that doesn't work as well) for many months, since I thought that the 12025D was awful.

Here's the deal: there are two differences between these two CPUs that would make a major cooling difference:

1. The Pentium 4 520 was running .5v higher than the Celeron.

2. The Celeron has a D0 stepping, so at it's stock speed, it only requires 65w. This is compared to the 84w power consumption of the Pentium 4 520.

Why does this make such a huge difference? Because of the heatpipe transfer rate. As I said before: a standard tower heatsink supplies 6 paths for heat to travel through the heatpipes. This heatsink only supplies 4 paths. So, although the cooling fins can dissipate heat perfectly fine, the heat has trouble getting to those pipes. I calculated out the overclock wattage for both my CPUs, and it looks like the Pentium 4 consumes 135w and the Celeron consumes 115w. Just a 20w difference pushed the heatsink over the edge.

3. Conclusion

So, in conclusion, this heatsink will work great with most CPUs. Stay away from CPUs that have a TDP of more than 120w, but for most CPUs, even with a little overclocking, this is a great heatsink. I highly recommend it. (with caution)  :-)