For the amount of copper in the KA06 we were a bit surprise to see it perform so poorly. The heatsink failed to make it below the range of out thermal display which max's out at 70 degrees Celsius. Using the AOS non-silicon thermal compound we have in the past been able to knock off a degree or two from the overall temperature rating. Obviously the use of silver-based thermal compound is an even better choice.

Conclusions:

The KA06 is listed as being able to handle Intel processors up to 1.13GHz, and AMD chips up to 1.5GHz, but with the temperature performance scores we saw during testing those specs seem a bit out of scale. Perhaps the model we used for out testing was slightly different from the units used to determine those results...

In any regard, the KA06 seems to offer less than ideal temperature performance for its surface area and make-up. The most obvious explanation for this lack of cooling prowess is poor thermal conductivity between the aluminum fins and the copper base plate. Ideally the copper plate should distribute the thermal energy from the core of the processor out towards the edges. It may in fact be doing just that, but if the aluminum fins cannot make proper contact with the copper then that heat energy will not be effectively dispersed to the surrounding environment. Bottom line, the KA06 achieved only average performance.