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)  :-)

Sandy Bridge ES Already on Ebay

Looks like someone got their hands on a Sandy Bridge Engineering Sample a couple days before its official release:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Sandy-Bridge-Core-i7-2600K-ES-3-4GHz-8MB-95W-32nm-/400185065420?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item5d2ce37fcc
and
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Sandy-Bridge-Core-i5-2300-ES-2-8GHz-8MB-95W-32nm-/260714136902?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item3cb3c60546
Just in case two days is too long of a wait..... :-)

Google Chrome CR-48 Full File Access

Just today, I loaded some new songs on my Sansa e250 mp3 player, and I later realized that I had a duplicate song. I had just turned off my Windows desktop, and I'm lazy, so I ended up trying to figure out how to delete the file from the device with my CR-48. With a little exploring, I figured it out in a jiffy:

1. Follow my previous post (it's right before this one) on how to get into the dev mode terminal.

2. Type dir /media

3. Then type cd -P (whichever device seems like the right one, without these parentheses. Make sure to be using correct capitalization throughout this process, or lack thereof)

4. Then type dir. A list of files from that device should come up.

5. After you've determined which file you want to delete, type sudo rm (file, without parentheses)

There ya go, deletion completed. A little message about admins and whatever should also come up after deletion, but it doesn't mean there was an error. Happy chroming! :)

Chrome OS Virtual Terminal

I just recently received a Google Chrome CR-48 notebook. After loads of searching, I've learned that you can get to a vritual terminal by hitting CTRL>ALT>T This is big, since there is no file manager. Just a heads-up for all lucky owners!

EDIT: It looks like there are no usual commands with this thing.... just network stuff. Dang.
EDITx2: It looks like a fully-functional terminal is only in dev mode. That's the solution. Just switch into dev mode, go to CTRL>ALT>T and type "shell"

SilentMods

I've been starting work on a project that involves a lot of heatpipe manipulation. I had no idea how to obtain heatpipes, and build any form of a heatsink. Luckily, I found www.silentmods.com. This site has EVERYTHING I could need to know about heatsink-making. I highly recommend this site for anyone who wants to perform a heatsink-related project.

Previews in Google: Pretty Epic

So apparently Google makes a preview now when you click the text below one of the links returned in a search. I know that this is personally something I'll use all the time. Nice job, Google! :D

Core i7 X 995: The Unreleased (but benchmarked!) CPU

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+995+%40+3.60GHz

This is a first as far as I know. A CPU that is benchmarked but currently unreleased (as I can tell from google.) It's a nice amount faster than the 980x with the pretty major clock increase. bet this thing will OC like crazy.