Introduction

Thermal Integration is a fairly new name to me, and I suspect that many of you have not heard of them either. But it appears that they have been around for quite a while, or at least their technology and designs have. As you'll notice from the design & look of their "Dr. Thermal" TI-V77L heatsink below, it is very similar to the ThermoSonic Thermoengine. Now at first, this appears to be an incident of design copying, but from I've gathered, it was Thermal Integration who patented the design behind the Thermoengine. Thermal Integration actually entered into a deal with ThermoSonic, and provided them with this design. Now it seems that after seeing the reception of the Thermoengine the teacher/master, Thermal Integration, wanted a piece of the heatsink market with a product of their own. Let's see how they managed with the design.

A package of thermal paste is included.

Standard 3-pin fan connector.

The lever, which forms part of the "E-system Attachment".

The first thing I realized was that this unit came securely packaged, in a bright-green box with a thick layer of foam on top and at the bottom, and ample space between the sides and the heatsink. Although a TIM comes on the base of the heatsink, a package of thermal paste was included as well, for the many of you who don't like using TIM's. Another thing that initially got my attention was the clip. It wasn't loose like the clips on other heatsinks which weren't installed. I soon noticed the lever on the side and became aware of its purpose, and how it makes this heatsink unique.

Specifications

Here are the specifications of the TI-V77L heatsink/fan:

• Dimensions: 70x70x40mm
• Fan Dimensions: 70x70x15mm
• Fan connector: 3-pin w/ rpm monitoring
• Power Input: 3.12w
• Fan Speed: 5000rpm
• Rated airflow: 36.5cfm
• Rated noise: 40dBa

As you can tell, the base isn't too bit at 70mm squared, but it may present a problem on motherboards that have capacitors too close to the socket. I had no such problems on the A7V-133. The choice of a 70x70x15mm fan was bit different than most heatsinks, which use 60x60mm fans, and results in this heatsink/fan being a bit shorter than most. It has a rated noise of 40dBa, and I found the noise to be much less than a Delta 60mm, but slightly more than a YSTech 60mm rated at 27cfm. The advantage is that the fan covers the entire top of the heatsink, and as such, more surface area should be exposed to more airflow from the fan.

The lever opened.

Bottom.

Bottom again...

The design of the heatsink is such that the base looks very much like the top. In fact, the major difference is the indent in the base to allow for it to fit upon the socket. The fins extend outward from the central core, allowing air to flow directly between them, and all of the fins have small ridges in them, with the intent to increase surface area. The central core is made up of copper, with a fairly clean joint between it and the aluminum. The base of the copper is fairly smooth, and I'd say that Thermal Integration did a fine job of making it as efficient as possible. From the top, you can also see that there are four more screw holes, closer to the center than the four used for attaching the 70mm fan. These four other holes are for attaching a 60mm fan.

The top, minus the fan and shroud.

Side view.

View of the lever.

However, the most interesting thing about this heatsink would have to be the clip design and lever action. It is designed to eliminate the need for tools when installing the heatsink, something that we all would love. When the lever is open, you slide both clips over the socket, and once they are in place, you depress or close the lever until it clicks in place. This action pushes the clip up, and results in bringing the heatsink into close contact with the CPU. It's a very nice idea, and did help a little - but its implementation isn't perfect, as you'll see later, because a small screwdriver was still needed at some point.

The fan, a 70mm squared by 15mm thick YSTech unit.

The unique clip design.

Close view of the clip.

The plastic fan shroud holds the lever and clip in place, and is in turn held in place by the same four self-threaded screws which hold the fan in place. It extends a few millimeters down over the heatsink, and has the name "Dr. Thermal" etched on two opposing sides.

Installation

After removing the TIM, which easily came off, I found it was quite easy to install this heatsink. I simply slid the clip's hooks over the socket and then depressed the lever, tightening and securing the heatsink to the CPU. Excellent! This was by far, the easiest install I've done for a Socket A heatsink! Although I did not have to use a screwdriver for installation, when it came time to remove this heatsink, I found that I had to use one to pry one side of the clip away from the socket. Not as troublesome as the removal of a regular one-piece clip, but not a truly tool-less setup.

Now the lever must be...

... depressed, and installation is done!

Testing

I tested this heatsink against all the other heatsinks that I had in my possession at the time of this review, to standardize the testing procedure. The CPU that was used was an AMD T-Bird 1.2GHz@1.33GHz with a voltage of 1.80. All the heatsinks were installed with a thin layer of Arctic Silver II thermal paste over the CPU core. Temperature readings were taken from the Asus onboard thermister using MBM, and the CPU was put at 100% utilization with the distributed.net client crunching RC5 for 1 hour. Here are the results I obtained:

The TI-V77L didn't fare too well against other units in this roundup. It could just be that the most of the units in this roundup were high-performance ones, with high-flow fans that generally make quite a bit of noise, but after removing the TI-V77L heatsink, I noticed that the CPU core had not be centered properly on the copper base. I tried to adjust the heatsink's placement, and tried moving the clip around, but I had no luck in getting the core aligned perfectly with the copper base. This could have affected performance to a degree.

Conclusion

Pros

• Easy to install!
• Base is smooth and joint between copper and aluminum is clean.
• Fan noise was not annoying.

Cons

• Performance not great.
• I could not get the CPU aligned properly with the copper base.

I enjoyed reviewing this heatsink, because of how easy it was to install. However, the results weren't what I expected. The CPU core wasn't greatly misaligned with the copper base, but instead was only slightly off. I must confess that I do not know what effect this had on performance. I hope to be able to test this unit under better conditions, but until this happens, my results may not be accurate.

Thanks to Thermal Integration for providing this review unit, all the way from Taiwan! I'm sorry to report that I have no pricing on this unit currently.

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