Lasagna BGA cooler Review

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Overclocking is approaching the level of a fine art. No longer is it simply a matter of influencing the main processor to perform leaps ahead of its intended speed. No, now we begin to tinker with the effects that memory, motherboard, and other components - nay, even sub-components - have on our ability to yank ever more performance from that small slab of silicon.

One such component is in the form of a BGA chipset at the very base of the processor slot on the motherboard. Routinely these chipsets come with a lame green heatsink, which, more often then not, forgoes even a trace of thermal compound in its interface. Stuck with OEM's cramming lack-luster cooling solutions down our throat, a few alternatives have surfaced. With the steady increases in power, speed and worst of all heat coming from silicon valley this is a welcome sight.

The mildly expensive Lasagna BGA cooler is one such device, and one we were able to test out recently. The $19 US price tag leaves one looking desperately in search of an OEM who makes the things, and hopefully sells them at a better price. But no such luck.

What you get for you hard earned cash is at least satisfyingly better then buying a GFD these days. The cooler, some thermal compound, printed instructions (gasp!) and even extra pins in our case. Did I mention those instructions actually have words on them - Leufken take note! The unit is a well made sandwich of stamped out aluminum which has been riveted together to form a grill of sorts around a small fan. For the power hungry out there, the Lasagna even comes with a pass-through Molex power connector.

The premise of the device is this, passive heatsinks work by radiating their absorbed thermal energy to the surrounding air. Active heatsinks seek to improve on this convection cooling method by forcing more air over the heatsink material, hence increasing the amount of thermal energy removed. Spiffy active heatsinks try various methods to get the air being moved by the fan to do as much cooling work as possible. The Lasagna is one such attempt...