Features and Performance

One of the nice things to occur in the recent year is the availability of good quality heatsinks. Much like the newest offerings from Thermaltake, Vantecs are conveniently packaged for retail purchase.

The Aeroflow 2 contains a small instruction manual for the first time builders, and some "better-then-frag-tape" Vantec brand white paste.

A small thermal area is all that is needed for the Aeroflow to cool effectively. This surface is fairly modern in design, and uses copper for good thermal conductivity.

Performance

Our test bench consists of the following components:

AMD Athlon XP1700+ JUIHB
Albatron KX18D Pro2
OCZ PC3200 Platinum LE BH-6
PNY FX5900
Silverstone Temjin aluminum case

     The majority of the Aeroflow is aluminum, but combined with copper allows the proper use of cooling when working in conjunction with a quiet fan. As you can see in the graph the cooling effectiveness ramps up quite nicely while overclocking. I was astonished to see that these temps were almost on par with our other test bench which is water cooled with 3 water blocks. For the sake of using what is available for the typical Aeroflow 2 customer, we chose to use the white thermal paste included with our sample. That way you can get a better idea of what numbers to anticipate if purchasing the Aeroflow 2 comes to mind. The fan noise level can be heard but is a far cry from what was typical used a few years ago, and with the test bench fully enclosed in a Silverstone Temjin case, its pretty much silent.

     I can't help but reflect on the strides heatsink technology has come, especially for mass quantity manufacturering such as Vantec. It wasn't so long ago when these kind of temperatures were unheard of unless you were watercooling, or had a 80mm Delta 80+ db fan on your all copper behemoth heatsink that mounted to your motherboard using four bolts. The Vantec seriously delivers for its value, and is very worthy in the sport of overclocking, even under serious conditions. The temperatures we achieved on our test bench really reflect an everyday system, but with only 2 60mm fans for the front intake and a 80mm low-rpm for the exhaust. We didn't even leave the case open, and the system refused to crash from heat. The Aeroflow 2 gets a thumbs up from this reviewer!