It should be common knowledge by now that the size of the fan can only improve the performance of a heatsink so much. The basis of those performance increases will always be the design of the heatsink itself, the surface area of the fins, and how well heat transfers from the processor core to the body of metal.

A great fin design can be handicapped by a poor thermal interface between the processor and the heatsink, and a great thermal interface can be useless if the heatsink fin design is useless. In the case of the Cho-Liang CB0309Z17 we can see a good looking base and a good looking fin design... but a possible problem right between the two.

The top of the heatsink has some cross cuts to create a peg design for added cooling surface area. The base of the central core is very smooth, and very flat for a superb thermal interface.

Looking at the ChoLiang CB0309Z17 we noticed right off the bat that the center section and the fin section are two different pieces of anodized aluminum. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, this could affect overall heatsink performance by a large degree. The problems could stem from the thermal joint in one of few ways. If the interface between the two pieces of metal is not tight enough heat energy trying to pass between the two will be faced with an air gap. This could be partially resolved with the use of a thermal compound between the two pieces, but it doesn't appear that any was used.

The other main issue which could hamper the thermal interface is the anodizing of the aluminum itself. Since this layer is crystalline, it inhibits thermal transfer. Without redesigning the entire die for this heatsink there are few fixes which could possibly help overall performance. Reaming out the center area to bare aluminum, and turning the outer layer of the central core down to bare aluminum would help alleviate the problems of thermal transfer as long as the interface between the two surfaces were very tight. This is of course something we can't test out first hand, so let's see what kind of results the CB0309Z17 generates for it self in its current configuration!