One can only imagine that somewhere deep in the ASUS engineering labs, sits a grinning thermal engineer at work on ProE. He or she is laying down the final fin geometry for the Triton 75 heatsink, when nefarious inspiration strikes! Several weeks later the first prototype of the Triton 75 heatsink comes back from the factory floor. The fangs at each corner of the Triton 75 bring a smile to our intrepid engineers' face; pointy strips of aluminum dangle like a canines teeth over each Intel retention clip and lie in wait for unsuspecting fingers! Should we really expect anything different from the Asus Triton 75 heatsink though? After all, the box is conspicuously festooned with the three-pronged spear used by Poseidon - the trident.

With errant design elements that hamper the user experience and do nothing to improve thermal performance, the Asus Triton 75 is an example of what not to do. On top of that, the Triton 75 fails as a heatsink for processors with a 150W power rating. And yet, the Triton 75 is not a complete write off... much like the similarly designed Spire Fourier IV SP607B3-C heatsink which also fails under high heat loads, the Asus Triton 75 actually handles 85W heat loads well.

The Asus Triton 75 heatsink FrostyTech is reviewing today ships without any fan, but is intended to be used with a 120mm fan of your choice. The 395 gram heatsink is uses four 6mm diameter copper heatpipes to support a 120x120mm aluminum fin array above the CPU socket. This orientation allows the fan to exhaust down towards the CPU and cool adjacent motherboard components. The Triton 75 is compatible with Intel socket 775 Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and all AMD Athlon64/Phenom sockets. It's also a relatively compact cooler, so the Triton 75 could be useful in smaller cases which have height restrictions. The retail price is around $35CDN ($35USD), making it fairly economical.

Asus Triton 75 Heatsink

heatsink specsheet manufacturer: asus model no.: triton 75 materials: aluminum fins, copper heatpipes, copper base. fan mfg: mechatronics g1225s12b fan spec: 1500rpm, 12v, 0.13a (as tested, fan not included) fan dim: 25x120x120mm heatsink & fan dim: 126x120x136mm weight: 395 grams (w/o fan) includes: lga775 and k8 socket mounting hardware, fan clips, thermal compound, instructions Compatible with Sockets: 754/939/940/AM2, LGA775 Est. Pricing: $35USD ($35CDN)

For our tests we will be using a 120mm Mechatronics G1225S12B fan. It's the same fan that has been used with many other fanless heatsinks Frostytech has tested in the past. Asus include two springy wire clips to mount the fan.

The Asus Triton 75 heatsink ships with brackets for LGA775 and AMD K8 processors (754/939/940/AM2 respectively). The Intel socket 775 clips use the standard push-to-lock plastic clips that insert into the four motherboard holes around the processor socket. AMD Athlon64 processors on 754/939/940/AM2 work with a modified spring clip that attaches to the lugs on the AMD heatsink retention frame. A cam lever at one end of the clip applies pressure to the heatsink base directly. The AMD clip is toolfree.

Base Finish and Flatness

Flipping a heatsink over to inspect the business end is often a simple indicator of overall cooler quality. More practically speaking, a heatsink is in many ways only as effective as the contact it makes with the processor - the flatter and smoother the better. Base finish is one of the criteria that Frostytech measure in the course of evaluating heatsinks, and it involves two distinct aspects. Surface Finish is the first; this is calculated with the aid of Surface Roughness Comparator that has a cross section of common machine surface finishes and their numerical surface roughness equivalents in microinches. The second is Surface Flatness. This is tested with an engineers straight edge or proven flat surface, in two axis.

The Asus Triton 75 heatsink heatsink has a surface roughness of approximately 32 microinches, which is considered good. The base itself has a smooth sanded finish and is flat in one axis, very slightly domed in the other.

The Asus Triton 75 heatsink will be tested on FrostyTech's Intel LGA775 and K8 version of the Mk.II synthetic thermal temperature test platform, and compared against several reference LGA775 and K8 heatsinks. The whole test methodology is outlined in detail here if you'd like to know what equipment is used, and the parameters under which the tests are conducted.