Packaging?

After taking the box out of the shipping container, it was fairly obvious that this product is destined for internet/mail order. There were no colourful graphics or enticing facts and figures. On the plus side, this shows how confident Thermalright are of their product and it also cuts down on cost.

The box is made of sturdy cardboard and displays the usual Thermalright logo on top. Inside the heatsink is further protected by a layer of thick foam.

The HS itself is covered in a thin plastic bag that protects it from dust. Underneath this, is a bag of fan clips, rubber mounts, a K8 socket converter, a sticker and an excessive syringe of heat paste. I couldn’t believe that Thermalright would give away this much heat paste, it’s in a 5ml syringe. Bearing in mind that Artic Silver 5 comes in a tiny 1.5ml tube and can cover 10 large cores; 5ml is going to cover 30+. Thankfully, when I removed the label only 1ml was used.

I put the manual aside and opened the box further revealing the actual heatsink which I removed and I was shocked at the weight. The low weight can be attributed to the use of aluminium which has a higher heat dissipation ratio to copper, but half the weight. The heatpipes however are made of pure copper as it has a higher heat conductivity rating than aluminium which is exactly what you want in a heatpipe.

The manual is a single sheet of double sided instructions. They tell you everything that you need to know, apart from what the abbreviations are. To be honest, they are not as clear as maybe they could be; but I very much doubt an overclocker would even need to refer to it.

The base of the heatsink isn’t particularly well lapped, but it is very flat which is good. A bit of hardcore polishing and all would be well. The bottom itself is copper with a thin nickel covering to prevent corrosion.

After a bit of polishing the bottom of the heatsink turns pinky as the copper underneath shows through.