Introduction

Heat Sink, Heat Sink, get your Ice Cold Heat Sink. Oops, thought I was at the Cub's game for a second. Well everyone, this time I am coming at you with a brand new review of the Global WIN SAK38 Heat Sink. The great people over at The Heatsink Factory shipped me over this beauty to review for you all to see. Some of you have probably read quite a few of my heat sink reviews and kind of know how I go about doing them. Well, today I am going to change it up a little bit. How am I going to change it up? Just read on and see for yourself.

Contents

What all could you expect when you order a heat sink online or purchase one in a store? The heat sink, a fan, thermal pad or grease, the clip, and the instructions? Well then, Global WIN includes all of that with every one of their heat sinks these days. Global WIN wants you to have a complete setup when you purchase one of their heat sinks.

Pretty Global WIN Box

Specifications

Applications

• Socket 462 (Athlon, Duron, Athlon XP2000+)
  
• Socket 370 (Pentium III, Celeron)
  
• Up to 2GHz

Fan

• Operation Voltage: DC 10.2 ~ 13.8 V
  
• Rated Voltage: DC 12V
  
• Rated Current: 0.39 A
  
• Input Power: 4.68 Watt MAX
  
• Bearing System: Two Ball Bearing
  
• Fan Speed: 7000±15 % RPM
  
• Air Delivery: 38.4±15 % CFM
  
• Noise Level: 46.7±2 Dba
  
• Fan Safety: UL Approved
  
• Fan with RPM signal output: Yes

Heat sink

• Dimension: 60 x 60 x 45 mm
  
• Material: Fins: Aluminum Alloy 6063T5, Base: Copper (Insert)

Clip

• Material: Steel SK7 ( Quality Material Clip )
  
• Thermal Interface: High thermal conductive interface
  
• Material: GW103
  
• Connector: Molex 2510 / 2695 3Pin
  
• Total Weight: 280g

As you can see from the fan specifications it is quite a loud fan. I believe that the fan is more then likely a Delta 60mm fan with a Global WIN sticker on it. The heat sink itself is a very nice looking heat sink with exceptional quality. The only thing the heat sink laps is a smooth surface. As a matter of fact, I think you will be able to smooth 600 grit sand paper with the heat sinks base. I have personally owned Global WIN heat sinks in the past, and never do I remember a base as bad as the SAK38 has. The base has a copper insert just like you would find with the Alpha's and the Taisol's. The clip at first, I was not to happy with. It is a very tight fit with the clip inside of the heat sink and is hard to slide all the way down. Once you have it slid down, attaching it to the CPU Socket is not all that hard. You will need a screw driver in order to attach the clip, but the notch on heat sink will ensure that you do not slip with the screw driver and possibly damage any components around the socket.

Global WIN SAK38

Another View (Clip)

Fan (Delta 60mm?)

Base Protected for shipping

Base w/ Thermal Pad

Hmm, can't see the case badge

The clip

Hey, the clip

Screw driver not slipping

Test Info

I am switching up the test bed a little bit here. One thing I will be adding to the CPU this time is a shim. A shim? BHAHAAHA. sn1per is a freakin' no0b @!@#@ BAH!!! No no0b here folks, the reason I am using a shim is the fact I just got the T-Bird 900 due to my last one committing suicide. Wait a second, you didn't answer your question, why are you using a shim? Oh, well, the reason I decided to use a shim was for the fact that the clip inside of the heat sink is pretty darn tight and in order for me to attach the heat sink, I had to attach it at an angle and push down until I could clip the 2nd half of the clip. Don't need to accidentally crush a core on a brand new CPU. Anyways, lets take a look at the equipment used for this testing.

• Asus A7V
  
• AMD T-Bird 900MHz (Arctic Silver 2 used for Thermal Paste, removed the Thermal Pad)
  
• 128MB PC133
  
• VisionTek TNT M64

The first part of the test will be at a default 900MHz with a core voltage of approximately 1.75v. I will be using my favorite CPU Benchmarking software, Sisoft Sandra 2001. I think that the CPU Multimedia Burn-In Test stresses the CPU far more then any other CPU Benchmark out there. I will be running 40 cycles to simulate the LOAD temperature at both the stock CPU settings and of course some over clocked settings. The maximum overclock I could get with this particular CPU and this heat sink was 1200MHz, where as with my Swiftech MCXC370 I was able to hit 1366MHz stable. I also ran the overclocked settings for 40 cycles in order to show the maximum LOAD temperature. For an IDLE temperature, I boot up the computer and let it run 3 hours while I watched the Olympics. After I finished watching the Olympics, I came back and recorded the temperatures for an IDLE temperature.

For temperature measurement, I used the motherboard sensor for the case temperature (read exactly the same as my room temp at idle), Motherboard Monitor 5 for the CPU, and the Digi-Doc 5 probe that was attached to the side of the core. Impressively, I noted a very slight difference in temperatures between Motherboard Monitor 5 and the Digi-Doc.

Results

Time for the fame and fortune here. The one and only, RESULTS. Well, as you will see from the results I achieved, I am not happy with the performance at all with the Global WIN SAK38. Here, before I go on, let me just show you what I am talking about.

Stock 900MHz Results

Overclocked 1200MHz Results

Now can you see what I am talking about? The only thing that I could tell that would hamper the temperatures, or make them as high as they were is the base of the heat sink. It feels almost like a finger nail file with the large grooves that are cut into the base. The machining process for this heat sink has definitely got to be one of the worst that I have seen, which is totally not like the Global WIN FOP's and the CAK's that I have previously owned.

The Base

Conclusion

Well, for once I am stumped. I still cannot figure out why the temperatures for the Global WIN SAK38 were as high as they were. Well, you all are probably thinking, well dipsh@!, you probably set the heat sink wrong on the CPU. Well, my answer to you is, I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS ALREADY, so I tested it again. Before I did the 2nd set of tests, I removed the heat sink, cleaned the base of the heat sink and the CPU, and reapplied Arctic Silver 2. The 2nd results were pretty much the same. So, with that in mind, lets take a look at the Pro's and Con's for this heat sink.

Pro's

• Complete Heat Sink Setup with Fan
  
• The Clip

Con's

• The Base
  
• The Clip (Fits tight into the heat sink making it hard to move)
  
• The Price (For $30 it should cool like a $30 fan and not a $10 one)
  
• The Noise (If a Delta won't help with the cooling, why not use a quieter fan?)
  
• No Molex Connector (What? You said it came with a Molex in the Specs...I gave you the specs that came with the heat sink, mine didn't include a Molex Connector)
  
• The Results

Well there you have it. The first heat sink that I have come across that I wouldn't recommend to anyone due to the price to performance ratio. I double checked everything during this review to make sure that I wasn't receiving false information at all from my recordings. I attached my Swiftech MCXC370 to the CPU with the same exact setup and my idle temps were 1c over case at stock and 3c over case at over clock. So, there is no way that my readings are wrong at all. I know the heat sink was sitting on the CPU as flush as possible since I removed it multiple times and also noted that the fins on the heat sink were quite warm to the touch. Now my temperatures are not as accurate as a professional temperature monitoring setup, but how many of you have the money let alone the space inside of your case for one of these setups? Also note, I may have received a bad production model of this heat sink. I had received a bad ThermalRight SK-6 before and even a lap job couldn't fix it's performance.

Well, this concludes my review of the Global WIN SAK38 Heat Sink that was provided by the great people over at The Heatsink Factory. Not only does The Heatsink Factory carry this Global WIN Heat Sink, but they also carry many of the top brand heat sinks on the market. So, if this heat sink isn't what you are looking for (I really don't blame you), make sure you check out their other lines of heat sinks. Once again I would like to thank everyone for taking their time reading this review and for The Heatsink Factory taking their time in sending me and allowing myself and Virtual-Hideout to review this heat sink. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns, please feel free to E-mail sn1per@virtual-hideout.net or head on over to the forums to discuss this review further. Thank you.

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