GlobalWin WBK-38 Heatsink Review

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What better heatsink to top off the newly release 900Mhz Duron than the GlobalWin WBK-38? With the WBK-38, GlobalWin have managed to produce a Socket A heatsink with some serious attitude.

Gone are the small fan and straight lines you'd expect from your typical little square heatsink! Instead, the WBK-38 has a curved extrusion and a high-power 6800RPM fan to give this heatsink everything it needs to be a top of the line cooler.

Will it work, will it beat out all of the competition? It sure looks like it can, but as we've seen in the past, looks don't always equal performance!

The Truth is in the Details:

What makes this heatsink stand out the most are the curves shown in the extrusion. In all the heatsinks we've looked at this is the only aluminum extrusion to have a base region of variable thickness.

In fact the region of the base which sits directly above the processors core is 5mm thicker than the rest of the base which is 8mm thick. Essentially a pyramid of base material is built up directly in the area which receives the greatest heat. The little triangle of material measures 18mm wide and 5mm high. Its purpose is no doubt to help transfer the heat from the core uniaxialy along the length of the heatsink. Oddly, the 6mm wide clip trough is cut down so far as there is only 4mm worth of base remaining. It would be interesting to see if the depth of this cut-out has any bearing on the heatsinks' ability to cool.

The fin design follows the pattern of the base in a wave form. The fins range in base height from 30mm to 35mm. The center section, and the outside corners have the longest heights. Fin width also varies from about 1.0mm at the base to 0.75mm at the top. The slight taper helps to cut down on resistance as the air from the WBK-38's powerful fan is blown downward.

Two small slices are made through the tops of the fins on either side for the wires which attach the fan to the unit. The fan itself is protected by a nice shinny 50mm wire fan grill. The wire has almost no resistance effect on the air being drawn in by the fan. Conversely, punched grills over fans on power supplies for example significantly cut down on the amount of air being drawn in by the fan, and cause a lot of drag. Luckily, such gills don't typically find their way onto the fans of heatsinks.

Nice and shiny wire grill has almost no impact on the fans air intake.	The Molex pass-thru adapter comes in handy when fan headers on the motherboard are scarce.

The GlobalWin fan plugs directly into the motherboard, and via a RPM monitoring cable enables the computer to monitor it for signs of trouble, should it seize or slow down drastically. As with many motherboards today, there either aren't enough fan headers or they are all being used. As a bonus GlobalWin include an adapter pass-thru cable for the fan which can be plugged directly into a standard Molex connector.