Arkua Cooler

Hey there, and welcome to Part 2 of Haz's Holiday Hardware! After my case extravaganza in the last article, I'm going to start looking at the sort of components you're going to want to put in that lovely new system you want for Christmas :D If you're upgrading your processor, chances are you're going to want a new CPU cooler to tame your new 1900+! This is where I come in...

I'm looking at the new 7528 cooler from those lovely folks at Arkua. Arkua was established in 2000, and include many engineers previously at Thermosonic - yes, that's right, the designers of the Thermoengine! All new products are now sold under the Arkua name, but what we have here is essentially the Thermoengine Mark 2!! You'll see what improvements have been made as you read on...

The lovely box the HSF comes in. Nice 'n' chunky 'n' sturdy.

Open up the box to find everything packed nicely :)

The manual. This is a fairly simple affair, with some diagrams illustrating the installation of the HSF and where to apply force to clip etc. For anyone who's ever installed a heatsink before, it's not really neccessary reading! That said, nice for newbies

And there you have it! The cooler has the familiar Thermoengine shape - kinda stunted and chunky! You can see a 70mm fan on top which covers the whole top of the HSF and is mounted to the shroud.

Here's a side view, you can see the clip mechanism.

From the other side. This shot gives you a good idea of the proportions.

Here's the fan. It's a strange creature, removing the fan reveals a YSTech sticker on the underside, so this is obviously rebadged. Its 70x15 mm - very thin. Noise wise, it's about equivalent to a 60mm YSTech, so this makes it fairly easy on the ears (no Delta whines!) Having the fan of a larger diameter allows it to rotate slower for the same amount of cooling - according to the specs in the manual, 4500 RPM with 36.36 CFM - pretty impressive stuff.