Where do heatsinks come from? A simple question to be sure (they come from a factory), but I often find it rather remarkable just how spread out around the world most heatsink manufactures are. Take for example Spire. Spire's offices are in the US, Taiwan and the Netherlands, but the heatsinks are manufactured in China.

The Pentium 4-based Spire SP411C5 has traveled far to come to the FrostyTech test labs, so let's not postpone the evaluation further! Sitting in front of us we have a m478 heatsink designed to cool the processor with a moderate amount of noise, scaling fan RPM as things heat up. At 300RPM the SP411C5 is good in the noise department, but at higher temperatures it can get somewhat loud.

Chances are, with good case ventilation most computers will never reach this high-RPM plateau, but after a few hours of gaming you never can really tell for sure. In any case, the SP411C5 comes packing a 45mm copper disc which has been inserted into the base to improve thermal conductivity between the processor and the rest of the heatsink.