Thermal Integration TI-A8736N Heatsink Review

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Thermal Integration's TI-A8736N heatsink is a heavy little cooler for the Intel Pentium 4 processor. Weighing in at 680grams, this cooler uses a fair amount of thin copper and aluminum plates to form a lean, mean, cooling machine. At least, that's what we're looking for from the TI-A8736N.

This type of bolted-together construction is not new in the cooling world, but Thermal Integration have taken a couple different technologies and mashed them into one. For starters, we find the same internal triangular base as that of the Tocools Novasonic-AlCu, and the remainder of the construction is pretty reminiscent of the way Zalman's flower shaped heatsinks are put together.

Zalman have certainly cornered the market with their style of bolted-together heatsinks, but I can also see Thermal Integration becoming a driving force in the more economically sensitive mainstream users segment. Bolted together, the 60 or so copper and aluminum fins come together to form a cohesive heatsink shape. The copper fins are located directly over the core of the processor to aide in thermal transmission, and mounted above all of this is a 70mm fan.

	Heatsink Specsheet: Model: TI-A8736N HS Material: Extruded aluminum and copper insert Fan: 4000RPM, 12V, 0.6A Fan Dim: 25x70x70mm FHS Dimensions: 93x63x70mm Weight: 680 grams Made by: T.I.T.I. Sold By: www.thermal-integration.com

Not only are there full size aluminum and copper fins in the construction of this heatsink, but between heat fin is a 1mm thick copper spacer in the shape of a smoothed out triangle. The copper base that these spacers form measures 8mm thick at the edges and about 13mm high at the center. The copper spacers help ensure heat is transmitted laterally to all the fins, and the triangular shape helps with with airflow within the heatsink itself.

Two relatively small screws and some steel brackets hold the fins of this heatsink together. Were the screws to loosen, the heatsink would come undone and the processor below would probably overheat and fail.