Neng Tyi SN03 Copper Heatsink Review

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At a listed weight of 666 grams you have wonder if black magic wasn't involved in the creation of this devilishly heavy copper heatsink from the Taiwanese manufacturer, Neng Tyi. While these heatsinks are only just starting to break through into North American markets, the time may be ripe for an explosion - as long as they can keep up with competition.

The competition in the heatsink world is becoming fiercer by the week as new companies enter the market with ever more powerful cooling solutions. One thing remains constant, and that's the copper. Copper is the performance users' best friend, helping to keep high-performance processors hopefully cooler than the rest. In the case of the Neng Tyi SN03, it has plenty copper to go around, and combined with a very reliable Nidec fan, it looks very impressive.

With its' giant mass of copper, one has to wonder if the 16.2 CFM Nidec fan is powerful enough to adequately remove the heat from those 24 sets of smooth copper fins. Rest assured we'll answer those questions in just a second as we take the SN03 for a ride on our Synthetic test bed.

The SN03 differs from other copper fined heatsinks in several respects. First of all the heatsink is built from a series of components; fins, base, and shroud. The fins on the SN03, and all of Neng Tyi's heatsinks have little interlocking tabs which hold them together independently of the framework and form a unique way of creating a bonded-fin heatsink. Rather then using one continuous strip of thin metal, folded over many times, the open top of this design allows more air to flow over the many fins. As a plus, the machine-made fin assembly has a nicer, flatter bottom to better make contact with the base.

While we're not entirely sure what effect this will have on the thermal conductivity of the unit, the thick copper base of the SN03 is plated with what looks like nickel to inhibit oxidation of the copper there.