Ascent AC300-4P Heatsink Review

---

Ascent makes the kind of heatsinks you'll see sitting on a shelf at your local computer store. This little guy, the AC300-4P caught our eye a while ago on a recent parts hunting trip. The bonded aluminum fins and large fan made it look like an excellent cooling solution for our overclocked PGA370 Celeron. Let's see how it really stacked up, and more importantly how it works on FC-PGA chips...

The folded fin aluminum heatsinks have been around in a few different variations, and manufactured by companies such as RJYD for some time now. One might think that the thin aluminum fins which form the backbone of this heatsink would offer really superior cooling potential. After all heatsinks work best when they can rapidly collect and remove heat to the surrounding environment. Right?

Well the thin fins certainly cool off rather quickly, but the question on our minds was whether or not they collected much of the heat from the 1/8" aluminum base. With only about 2mm of the folded aluminum in contact with the base at each fold, chances were that the heat might not be conducting very high up the fins.