It's been
a while since we spent time at the test bench determining the thermal
performance of a 1U heatsink, but here we are again. In this review, the
heatsink manufacturer CoolJag (a division of Dynatron) has submitted to Frostytech the CoolJag E44C/180
heatsink. The E44C/180 is a fully copper skived heatsink which is
actively cooled by a thin squirrel cage fan that rests on top. The entire
heatsink measures 28mm in height, and fits into a standard socket 478
wire-clip retention frame. These types of retention frames were
popular with the socket 423 Pentium 4 processors for a while,
and have now been retasked to 1U requirements. The CoolJag
E44C/180 is available through SelectCool.
Given that a 1U of space in a 19" rack equates to a
server 1.75" thick, there is typically no more than about 30mm of vertical space
for the entire processor cooling solution; heatsink and fan. Most
commercial servers will tend to use fully passive heatsinks, and engage airflow
with the use of an array of 40mm fans.
For smaller servers, handling Firewall or VPN
requirements, less noise intensive cooling solutions are used for what is in most cases a standard desktop mainboard inside a small 1U
server chassis. For these applications, the copper skived heatsink
and squirrel cage design make sense. For production critical servers, it is always
best to go with passive heatsinks and forced air from case fans.
The question of
course is how well does this 1U server Pentium 4 heatsink really perform? We'll answer that
question in just a second.
With a lanky m478 heatsink such as this comes the need to
install both a metal backplate and wire-clip retention frame on the motherboard. Everything
that you need to do this is included along with the heatsink, so it is only a
matter of pulling out the motherboard, installing the HSRM and metal
backplate, and then putting everything back into the case. Such processes are a
bit of a pain with out-of-the-box servers, but if you are building your own this
doesn't add much time to the entire process.
The clipping mechanism is pretty
sturdy, so you should even be able to get away with leaving the heavy copper heatsink installed
during transit.
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