Surface Roughness Comparator:

Surface finish is an important factor that we all look for when holding a new heatsink. Flipping a cooler over to see how well the base has been machined is a quick way to judge the attention to detail that was put into making it. The following FrostyTech Surface Roughness Comparator offers a concise cross section common machine surface finishes. Not every heatsink base will fit into the envelope of this gage, but it does offer a very handy set of representations.

This commercially available gage has 22 machined surfaces from 2 to 500 microinches; Lapped (2, 4, and 8 µ" RA), Ground (8, 16, 32, and 63 µ" RA), Blanchard Ground (16 and 32 µ" RA), Shape Turned (32, 63, 125, 250, and 500 µ" RA), Profiled (63, 125, 250, and 500 µ" RA), and Milled (63, 125, 250, and 500 µ" RA).

FrostyTech Surface Roughness Comparator
the base of a heatsink plays an important role in how well the cooling apparatus interfaces with the processor. poor surface roughness will affect a good heatsink just as much as a good surface finish will improve thermal conductivity. in an effort to put a more quantitative spin on the comments we provide about base finishes, frostytech has begun using a surface roughness comparator. move your mouse over the image above to see an example at right. numbers are in microinches, and finishes from 2 microinches to 32 microinches are excellent-to-good.
Evaluation Notes:
The CoolJag CJC66IC-A heatsink had a surface roughness of approximately 4M, so it is well within the acceptable range of surface finishes. A finish of 4M is not given on this example guage, but one of 4L roughly approximates the degree of very subtle surface irregularities found.

Acoustic Samples: Listen to this Heatsink!

Under the lower speed settings the fan rotates at about 1300RPM, which is virtually silent for all intensive purposes in a PC. Once the Cooljag CJC66IC-A kicks up to full speed, it becomes very loud and would easily be heard outside the PC case. Given there isn't much point of recording a silent noise signature under room temperature conditions, we have simply recorded the full-speed noise output of the Cooljag CJC66IC-A. To listen to this heatsink for yourself in operation, be sure to click on the little headphones icon below and download the Acoustic Sample MP3 file.

(high) FrostyTech Acoustic Sampling Chamber
Standard Waveform view of a 10 second recording. Click on the headphones to listen to an MP3 recording of this heatsink in operation.

Sound Level Measurements:

Listening to the actual noise a heatsink makes allows you to hear what pure numbers alone cannot get across. To further emphasize FrostyTech's reliance on cold hard facts when evaluating a heatsink, we also take Decibel readings with a sound level meter. These results may be higher than the manufacturer's listed specs, but then again these are real world measurements. Measurements are made on the dB (A) scale.

FrostyTech Sound Level Results
-	Manufacturer	Model	Noise Level	Scale
	TS Heatronics	NCU-1000	passive	N/A
	CoolJag (low)	CJC66IC-A	30.0 dB	Quiet
	Verax	P16	35.3 dB
	Spire	SP420B8	40.2 dB
	Zalman	CNPS7000-Cu	41.7 dB
	ArcticCooling	SuperSilent4 Pro	41.8 dB
	Zalman	CNPS6500-AlCu	47.4/28.9 dB
	Zalman	CNPS7000A-Cu	42.2 dB
	Intel	Socket 478	42.5 dB
	CoolJag	JVC661A	43.9 dB
	Arkua	8456X-8T	46.5 dB
	Evercool	NW9F715CA	47.3 dB
	Intel	Stock 3.06GHz	47.5 dB
	Aopen	ACP4LC	48.7 dB
	Arkua	Q85X-7J	49.0 dB
	Arkua	848X-6B	49.3 dB
	Taisol	CEP426151A	50.7 dB
	Scythe	Kamakaze	51.0 dB
	Arkua	838T-7G	51.7 dB
	JMC	401100	53.0 dB
	Dynatron	DC1207BMW	53.0 dB
	Spire	SP411C5	53.2 dB
	Dynatron	DC1207BMY	53.2 dB
	Dynatron	DC1207BMX	53.4 dB
	Thermal Integration (high)	TI-V7035TN	53.6 dB
	Zalman	CNPS5700D-Cu	53.8 dB
	Globalwin	VA476	54.2 dB
	Dynatron	DC1206BMV	55.1 dB
	AVC	117140	56.1 dB
	Taisol	CEP447181	56.8 dB
	Taisol	CCP445172	57.5 dB
	Cooljag (high)	CJC66IC-A	59.1 dB
	Dynatron	DC1U-B02	62.2 dB
	Coolermaster	IHC-H71	64.4 dB
	Thermalright (high)	SLK-900U	67.2 dB	louder

If your PC already runs cool, congratulations, the Cooljag CJC66IC-A offers a great low-noise cooling option. However, once that thermistor kicks up the fan's RPM, things get quite noisy. Up next, the thermal results!