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Testing Well, the true test would be when I had it installed, so I continued to give the Heat Guzzler the benefit of the doubt. I finally managed to get it installed onto the processor. Now, this was on an older motherboard with a puny Duron 750 installed, so I figured this would be an easy cooling task for the mighty Heat Guzzler. It's advertised to cool even the hotter 3400+. Well, since I was a little leery after my previous findings, I hit the DEL key on bootup and immediately went into the PCHealth screen of the BIOS to watch the temperatures. So I watched it go from 35 to 40. I figured it would stabilize soon, since my OEM sink keeps it at around 41 or 42C most of the time. Nawp. Kept right on climbing all the way up to about 62C before I finally turned it off. Can you say thermal runaway? And the packaging clearly says "Powerful Heat Pipe for overclocking". My cynicism reads this another way: "Since you've already voided your warranty by overclocking, we won't be responsible for frying your processor", but maybe I've talked to too many tech support personnel over the years. Conclusion I was in a quandary. This is the first time I have encountered a mod product that was so obviously designed with only the marketing aspect in mind. Heat Pipe technology sounds cool. A copper colored base looks mighty high-tech when sealed within the plastic bubble packaging. A radically designed cooler with one thing in mind, getting you to take it up to the counter to pay for it. After that, apparently you're on your own. In all seriousness, I sat on this for a week or so before I could make up my mind on what to do. I generally try to stick to the philosophy that if you don't have something nice to say about someone, then don't say anything at all. But the more I think about it, the more riled up I get about it. There are a lot of companies out there trying hard to survive by selling products to us. The resellers are generally not the ones that manufacture the products, and it isn't practical for them to test each product that comes to them. The marketing tricks FoxConn employed on this product (and I do see them as tricks) succeeded in having at least one company buy lots of them to sell. Now I come along and rag on it. So this reseller is probably going to get stuck with inventory. They probably won't want to send me anything else to review after this either, but that's no skin off my back. A last word on this: Of all the consumer groups out there, the mod community is the LAST one that you want to try to fool, because the numbers don't lie. And we LOVE to take things apart to find out what's inside. A sound reputation is made on having quality products, period. I wouldn't recommend this product to anyone who is looking for a quality heat sink. Pros
Cons
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