After the air is finally exhausted from the cooler, it is directed by the blue plastic skirt towards adjacent electrical components on the motherboard.

While you're right in thinking that the heatsink's exhaust air may have been warmed significantly, it's still useful for cooling motherboard voltage regulator MOSFET's (or the Gigabyte DPS power system), the Northbridge chipset, and even the rear of the videocard.

Multi-Processor Socket Support

The Gigabyte 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro's inherent level of platform versatility means that some sacrifices have been made to accommodate the different thermal requirements, and differently size CPU cores and heat spreaders of each platform. Still, the obvious benefit for consumers is that just one heatsink will work on any platform you may upgrade to in the near future. In practice, the 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro works best on processors with a larger core, like the AMD Athlon64 or Intel Pentium 4.

Used with one of three included clips, and a special plastic mounting frame (LGA775RM), the 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro attaches with little fuss.

It's important to consult the manual to ensure you have the heatsink oriented properly when using it with a socket A, or socket 775 processor however. There is a small tab of metal that comes down, and if you have the heatsink installed the wrong way, it will cause problems when you power up the PC.

A 3.5" bay fan speed controller plugs right into the side of the 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro heatsink and allows direct control of the squirrel cage fan speed. Without the controller, the fan spins at a nice noisy 56.7 dBA. At the slowest fan speed, noise levels are a whispery 43.8 dBA.

FrostyTech's K8 Test Methodology is outlined in detail here if you care to know what equipment is used, and the parameters under which the tests are conducted. Now let's move forward and take a closer look at the Gigabyte 3D Rocket Cooler-Pro heatsink, its acoustic characteristics, and of course it performance in the thermal tests!