AVC Z7U7408001 Heatpipe P4 Heatsink Review

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Asia Vital Components are probably one of the largest heatsink manufacturers out there, and yet, the AVC name brand isn't really familiar with consumers. AVC make most of AMD's and Intel's stock cooling solutions, and OEM for countless videocard manufacturers. In this review, FrostyTech will be testing one of AVC's best high performance Pentium4 heatsinks to see if it is worth your hard earned dollar.

While the AVC Z7U7408001 is an amazingly powerful heatsink, the name isn't very consumer friendly, so bear with me as I get used to typing out a 10-digit product number... What puts the AVC Z7U7408001 Intel Pentium 4 heatsink near the top of our list of reference heatsinks is quite simple; a powerful fan, two copper heatpipes, and two separate sets of cooling fins. Toss in a dose of copper here and there, some solder to firm up the joints, and there you have it - a 64 dBA loud heatsink which manages to rank in the performance cooler section of our comparison chart!

AVC were good enough to include the blue-prints for this bad boy, so I can tell you with unprecedented clarity about what makes this compact Prescott FMB1.5 ready 83x95x71mm heatsink tick.

	Heatsink Specsheet: Model: Z7U7408001 HS Material: Extruded aluminum with copper base, two copper heatpipes, and AL-6063 T5 aluminum stacked fins Fan: 5400RPM, 12V, 0.7A, ball bearings Fan Dim: 15x70x70mm FHS Dimensions: 83x95x71mm Weight: n/a Made by: AVC Sold By: www.avc.com.tw

The AVC Z7U7408001 is a compact heatsink. Its fan is only 15x70x70mm in size, but it packs in a big punch. However, the key components of the entire cooler are the two heatpipes which link up the extruded aluminum and stacked aluminum fins.

The twin heatpipes are soldered to the base of the aluminum extrusion, which is nickel plated. Covering them is a small 33x37mm copper pad which measures ~ 4mm thick. This small plate holds the 6mm diameter copper heatpipes in place, and distributes the heat from the processor core evenly to both.

Heatpipes work by transferring heat from one end to the other, and this allows the AVC Z7U7408001 to essentially have a primary and secondary set of cooling fins.

The system works like this; as heat energy from the processor reaches the two heatpipes - which are sealed off at both ends to contain a small amount of "working" fluid under a vacuum - a reaction begins to occur.

The working fluid inside each heatpipe absorbs the latent heat from the copper plate below, causing the fluid to undergo a phase change into water vapour (ie. it converts to steam). In our daily lives, water boils at 100C, but as pressure is decreased the temperature gradient required to make water convert to vapour also drops.

The small amount of working fluid inside each heatpipe quickly converts to vapour, as the temperature of the evaporator end (hot side) of tube increases.

The liquid vapour inside the heatpipe is subsequently drawn to the cooler end of the heatpipe and condenses. As the hot vapour cools back into a liquid, the heat energy that was previously stored is transferred to the metal, and then surrounding fins of the heatsink.

The condensed vapour, now working fluid once again, is drawn back towards the hot evaporator end of the tube by capillary action along an internal wick structure. As the liquid reaches the hot end once more, the entire process repeats itself. This is how heatpipes work, and how the AVC Z7U7408001 is able to keep an Intel Pentium 4 processor running cool. :) Now, let's take a slightly closer look at this heatsink from AVC...