Spire X2 9884 CPU Heatsink Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Spire X2 9884 CPU Heatsink Review - Spire calls its X2 9884 CPU air cooler the "next evolution" of previously hugely successful products, the Thermax and Gemini. Six direct contact heatpipes lead the cooling along with 46 aluminum fins. It claims silence and performance. Air cooling has been getting very competitive lately though, can Spire take the heat?
 
The Coolermaster Hyper 212 line can be had for $28-35 and you can add a second fan for $10-15. I got one for my wife's system and liked it so much I ended up grabbing one to replace my TrueSpirit. It's a good quality built HSF and is dirt cheap.
 
Seeing the design of this HSF, I really wanted it to work but while they have decent performance its just way too expensive.

Hard to beat the 212 for dirt cheap performance right now, a little more money and you have a low end closed loop system.
 
Wow. The picture of the base where it was seated to the cpu is pretty bad. They should know that you need to make the base small enough to fit the whole cpu.....
Along with the outer pipes having more cooling power and ending up cooling nothing.

Maybe after this review they will rework it into something better.
 
the base looks like it would fit a 16 core Opteron cpu perfectly, if it would line up properly
 
Thanks for the review. I love that [H] provides a base for things I should buy as well as things I shouldn't buy.

Such a fundamental design flaw (too wide for 1155) must have been obvious before release. Personally, I will never buy anything from a company that knowingly releases a flawed product. Even if/when they fix it, they've lost my trust.
 
Spire has been creating low cost heatsinks.How much these HSF goes?I have not seen it in europe yet....
 
Hagrid said:
Wow. The picture of the base where it was seated to the cpu is pretty bad. They should know that you need to make the base small enough to fit the whole cpu.....
Along with the outer pipes having more cooling power and ending up cooling nothing.
Click to expand...

Just to play devil's advocate: the heat pipes that don't make direct contact with the IHS will still conduct heat away, just maybe not as efficiently as they could by making contact. I think the 33% less effective number thrown out in the review is a bit harsh, it might be more like half that but without a proper test rig that is hard to gauge (and probably shouldn't be speculated upon in a serious review). Remember, heat pipes haven't always made direct contact and they still worked then didn't they?
 
Looks like another situation where the designers create a cool design without first consulting someone with common sense. Two heatpipes that don't even touch the cpu? I am suprised at how something like that could have made it through quality control. Temps looked pretty good but for the hassle and design flaws I would stick with something like the hyper 212 or myriad of other good cheap heatsinks.
 
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