Verax Surface Roughness Comparison - Polargate AL S 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 Verax Polargate Al S heatsink has a surface roughness of approximately 8microinches, which is considered very good. Move your mouse over the tabs above and look at 8M for an approximate example of what this surface finish looks like.

Acoustic Samples: Listen to this Heatsink!

Verax produce very quiet fans, and this makes their heatsinks some of the quietest units around. 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. We have split the acoustic sample into two parts, the first is the Polargate AL S running at full speed, and the second, at the lowest noise setting.

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.

Low - 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

Verax P16Cu 31.5 dB

Verax Polargate AL S (L) 32.4 dB

Verax P16 35.3 dB

Spire SP420B8 40.2 dB

Verax (high) P17CuX 40.8 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

Evercool NW9F715CA 47.3 dB

Intel Stock 3.06GHz 47.5 dB

AVC Z7H2403012 48.2 dB

Aopen ACP4LC 48.7 dB

Evercool CUW8-715 50.7 dB

Taisol CEP426151A 50.7 dB

Scythe Kamakaze 51.0 dB

Arkua 838T-7G 51.7 dB

Verax Polargate AL S (H) 52.5 dB

Jetart JAP416A 52.8 dB

Thermal Integration TI-RV108N 52.9 dB

JMC Products 401100 53.0 dB

Thermal Integration (high) TI-V7035TN 53.6 dB

Zalman CNPS5700D-Cu 53.8 dB

Coolermaster (high) Hyper6 KHCV81U1 54.1 dB

Globalwin VA476 54.2 dB

Thermal Integration TI-A8736N 54.8 dB

Jetart JAP407A 55.7 dB

Alpha S-PAL8952 55.8 dB

AVC 117140 56.1 dB

Vantec VP4-7245 56.8 dB

Taisol CEP447181 56.8 dB

Coolermaster (high) Jet4 58.9 dB

Cooljag (high) CJC66IC-A 59.1 dB

Dynatron DC1U-B02 62.2 dB

Gigabyte (high) PCU31-VH 63.7 dB

AVC Z7U7408001 64.2 dB louder

Even with both fans running at their lowest RPM, the Verax Polargate Al S, comes in with just over 32 dBA of noise - which is very, very quiet indeed. When set to the highest thermal performance setting, the Verax heatsink becomes more audible, and weighs in with just over 52 dBA noise inside our acoustic measurement chamber (sound meter is about 12" away from heatsink). Now lets see what these sound measurements translate into with respect to thermal performance!

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