The CF’s

Click to enlarge

Sent in an easily opened clamshell packet, the contents were soon freed. Inside you’ll find the cooler, four spring screws, a small tube of thermal goo, and a LGA backing plate.

Click to enlarge

Both the coolers share the exact same shape and design, apart from the material used for the fins. The CF800 is primarily aluminium while the CF900 is mainly copper. Both of the coolers have copper bases which should make thermal transfer from the core as fast as possible.

Click to enlarge

Lying just a millimetre away from this copper base are 4 heatpipes that bend in a splayed U shape to the centre of the elevated fins above. The fins don’t actually make contact with the base themselves, and are held a centimetre away by two side brackets and the heatpipes. Atop the fins and connected to the side brackets is a large see-thru 92mm fan. This fan blows directly downwards into the fins and the air escapes from the bottom of the heatsink. There are fins covering every possible area where the fan blows making full use of its cooling potential equating to more than 2356cm2 surface area.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

While the heatpipes on the CF800 look like they are made of aluminium, they are actually copper pipes in disguise, as they have a shiny nickel coating so they fit in with the rest of the cooler body. The CF900 heatpipes are also fully copper, but there is no expense paid to colour.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

To enable the fan to use lower fan speeds than a motherboard PWM can provide, there is a thermistor embedded in the top fins below where the heatpipes connect. This enables slower rotation, meaning lower noise production. Another benefit of having the thermistor built-in is so that you don’t have to mess about with your BIOS settings, also some motherboards don’t support PWM fan control.

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

While the cooler doesn’t support PWM speed control, it comes with a 4 pin fan header connector with the fourth (PWM) wire removed which seems like an odd decision. However, it does mean that you won’t plug the cooler into anything but the CPU fan header slot.

Click to enlarge

To mount the coolers, you only have the option of LGA775 rather than the usual array of mounting options heatsinks normally provide. While this lowers compatibility, you can be sure that the heatsink has been better designed for the one socket it supports. In order to install the heatsink, you have to remove your motherboard and use the supplied backing plate which screws into place with four spring screws.

Click to enlarge

The CF900 weighs in at 562g while the CF800 is a meagre 357g. Neither weight is anything to be worried about as the mounting method should keep them secured in place, allowing you to take your PC to a LAN party and not worry about a run-away heatsink.