Arkua Surface Roughness Comparison - 728M-7N01 FrostyTech Review

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 Arkua 728M-7N01 heatsink had a surface roughness of approximately 63P , which is a little below what we would like to see from a heatsink.

Acoustic Samples: Listen to this Heatsink!

The Arkua 728M-7N01 heatsink weighs in at just under 50 dB, making it pretty easy to live with for most typical PCs.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

Verax (low RPM) P14Cu 31.2 dB Quiet

Verax P14 32.1 dB

Verax P11T 35.3 dB

Spire 5U213C1H3G 35.7 dB

Coolermaster HHC-L61 42.2 dB

Coolermaster HSC-V62 43.7 dB

Akasa AK821 44.2 dB

Spire 5F263 44.5 dB

Akasa Ag Mountain2Q 45.5 dB

Taisol CMK702 47.3 dB

Zalman All Flower HSF 47.4/28.9 dB

Arkua 728M-7N01 48.2 dB

Taisol CGK760092 48.4 dB

GlacialTech Igloo 2310 49.4 dB

Cho-Liang CB0307U-17 49.5 dB

Arkua 628 50.7 dB

Noisecontrol Silverado 50.8 dB

Tocools Novasonic 52.2 dB

Tocools Novasonic-AlCu 52.4 dB

NengTyi XPC5000 52.4 dB

Spire 5T235 52.5 dB

Thermal Integration TI-V77L 53.0 dB

GlacialTech Igloo 2400 53.9 dB

Eumax EU01 55.4 dB

Sibak AE01625B 58.2 dB

AVC Tundra 2 58.4 dB

Sibak AC02625B 59.7 dB

Coolermaster HHC-001 59.9 dB

Sibak AC06725TH 62.4 dB

Dynatron DY1206BH-625 63.3 dB

Dynatron DC1206BMP 65.1 dB

Thermalright SLK800 66.2 dB

Thermalright AX-7 66.4 dB louder

There are plenty of heatsinks in the 47 dB thru 50dB range in our reference list. While the low end of the scale dips below 35 dB on our test meter, 48.2 dBA is still considered pretty good.

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