Evercool CUW8-715 Copper Heatsink Review

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What's better than a little copper to keep your Pentium 4 processor running nice and cool. However, knowing which cooler is worth its weight in copper isn't always a straightforward task. The choice becomes even more complicated when you have heatsink manufacturers adapting K7 cooler designs for the Pentium 4, or simply building P4 heatsinks to fit K7 requirements.

From what we've seen, heatsinks which support both processors (Pentium 4 and K7) in one go, or even in different models, often favor one processor over the other. Given that the Evercool CUW8-715 is a carbon copy of the Evercool CUF-715 for the AthlonXP, it will be interesting to see how the former performs when faced with the increased thermal interface of the Pentium 4 synthetic temperature test platform.

The Evercool CUW8-715 is a nice little socket 478 heatsink constructed of thin copper fins soldered to a rather concise 45x63mm copper base plate. The classy gold fan blades certainly make this cooler stand out, but just how well the heatsink performs thermally is a question which remains to be answered.

	Heatsink Specsheet: Model: CUW8-715 HS Material: Copper fins and base Fan: 3500RPM, 12V, 0.18A Fan Dim: 15x70x70mm FHS Dimensions: 60x86x63mm Weight: 345 grams Made by: Everflow Sold By: www.evercool.com.tw

The Evercool CUW8-715 uses a set of over-the-heatsink clips which work well enough, but can be a bit tricky to engage in tight spaces.

Evercool CUW8-715 Heatsink From All Angles
	The Fan: To protect the heatsink from inhaling a molex connector. which could jam the fan impeller, the Evercool CUW8-715 comes with a black plastic fan grill. While this compliments the whole look of the cooler, I've always been partial to the wire fan grills instead. Wire grills do not affect airflow, whereas plastic ones like this can have a small negative effect on air intake. The fan connects to standard 3-pin fan header on the motherboard, and supports RPM monitoring.
	Heatsink Top: With the fan removed we can see the fan shroud and interlocking copper fins below. These assemblies of fins have become really popular, and given that they also increase assembly speed, are probably part of the reason why copper heatsinks have come down in price to very reasonable levels. Each fin measures roughly 0.2mm thick, and is spaced 1mm apart.
	Side A: From the edge of the Evercool CUW8-715 it's easy to see just how thin those copper fins are. The base of each fin is folded over 1mm to create the tab which is then soldered to the copper base. The copper base plate measures 6mm thick.
	Side B: The black aluminum fan support attaches directly to the copper base with four screws. The shroud doesn't appear to have been designed to direct fan exhaust back towards the outer fins of the heatsink. Instead, a more stylistic approach has determined its funky "X" like appearance. The copper fins are 31mm tall, and 70mm long.
	Heatsink Base: With the copper fins hanging over the small base plate 19mm on either side, I would have expected a little larger copper base plate. Though, given that this exact same heatsink is also used in a socket A configuration, this is of little surprise. The base has a pretty average sanded surface finish, which has left it with a very slightly domed curvature. The dome is very slight, and I don't expect it to cause any real problems when mounted on a processor.