Coolink Chipchilla Chipset Cooler Review

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Product: Chipchilla
Manufacturer: Coolink
Supplied by: Coolink
Price: 24USD/RM84
Launch Date: Jan 2008

Today we are going to review a cooler but we believe only hardware enthusiasts are interested with it; a motherboard chipset cooler. Coolink ChipChilla is a large 6mm heat pipe cooler with a quiet 60mm fan which is created to solve today high end but burning chipsets. Let us see what this cooler capability compares with original chipset cooler.

Company Profile

Coolink is a brand of the Kolink International Corporation and stands for an effective conjunction of no-frills performance, excellent quality and attractive pricing. Coolink - the direct link to affordable high-end cooling!

Kolink International Corporation is a cooling specialist established in 1996 and well known among industry insiders. Throughout the years, Kolink designed and manufactured many top-performing heat-sinks under various brand names that succeeded in international markets. An experienced R&D team and ultra-modern production plants in Taiwan ensure continuous progress, efficient manufacturing conditions and strict quality standards.

Features

• Large 6mm Dual-Heatpipe for maximum cooling performance
• Quiet 60mm fan for faster heat dissipation at minimum noise levels (19dB)
• Asymmetrical design ensures optimal compatibility
• Flexible, easy-to-use mounting system for Intel and AMD mainboards with push-pins & mounting-hooks

Specifications

Package & Contents

Coolink Chipchilla is packed with a small square box with transparent cover for the front portion which gives better idea about its design and layout. Only features are highlighted at the back of the packaging box but the specification is available at Coolink website if you would like to know the detail of this product; copper base/heatpipe, aluminum the fin, 60mm fan size with 2200RPM and 19dBA.

Besides the Coolink Chipchilla chipset cooler, other accessories that come along are user's manual, push-pin, mounting hook, spacer foam and a pack of thermal paste. Besides push-pin, mounting hook is included as some chipset requires different mounting method and Coolink Chipchilla should be compatible with most of the motherboard chipset (three installation methods; push-pin, push-pin with mounting arms and mounting hooks).

The spacer foam is used to protect the chipset from being damage during installation but this spacer foam is not required for those chipset that already comes with heat spreader (so far we still haven seen any chipset that come with heat spreader). The user's manual basically is the packaging brochure and it provides very detail installation information which should be good enough even for a newbie.

A Closer Look - Coolink Chipchilla

Coolink Chipchilla is designed and created for high end motherboard which is equipped with latest, fastest chipset and most of the time such chipset will generate quite huge amount of heat so a proper cooling is needed especially for overclocking purpose. However due to high competition among the motherboard makers, most of such high end motherboards are equipped with advanced chipset cooler and some of them are even powered with heat pipe, water cooling and etc. If your motherboard doesn't have such great stock cooler yet then Coolink Chipchilla should be a great choice for you as currently it is quite hard to see such good chipset cooler in the market due to lower demand.

Same with other high end CPU cooler where Coolink Chipchilla is also built by copper material for the base and the heat pipe while aluminum for the cooling fins. Such combination is widely being used in cooling sector as it is not only producing promising result but also affordable price. The design layout of Coolink Chipchilla is a U-shaped tower cooler where the heat pipe helps to transfer the heat from the copper base to the aluminum fins.

Before purchase Coolink Chipchilla, it is advisable to double check for it compatibility as this is huge chipset cooler that may not suitable for certain motherboard, graphic card, casing or the whole setup. The overall dimension of Coolink Chipchilla with fan is around 94 x 40 x 60 mm (H x D x W) and the net weight is around 130g; it is light but not so light compare with standard passive or active chipset cooler.

There are total 36 aluminum fins to maximize Coolink Chipchilla cooling efficiency with the help of the 60mm fan. Coolink stated Chipchilla has two heat pipes but for better accuracy, it is only one heat pipe; a U-shaped heat pipe. Although the heat pipe is in silver cooler basically it is made by copper material but just with additional nickel/aluminum coating. For better compatibility, Coolink has designed Chipchilla heatsink where the fan can be mounted on either side but only one fan can be mounted at the same time.

As we mentioned before Coolink Chipchilla comes with copper base which is a great conductive material. The finishing of this copper surface is not very well but it can be considered acceptable for a chipset cooler as it should able cool down the chipset temperature near to ambient temperature as chipset isn't as hot as CPU. At default, the push-pin mounting arms are preinstalled on the Coolink Chipchilla where it can be straightaway applied with the push-pins for certain setup else mounting hook needs to be used.

Basically the copper heat pipe was soldered between the copper base and the aluminum top plate. There are two knobs at the middle of the aluminum top plate which is designed to be used with the mounting hooks since some of the motherboards may need it rather than the push-pins especially for Intel board and those motherboards which need mounting hook will have easily installation as motherboard removing from the casing is not required.

The blue fan of Coolink Chipchilla is a 60 x 60 x 10 mm slim fan where it has 2200RPM fan speed but only 19dB/A noise which looks silent base on these information that are provided by Coolink. The mounting clips are preinstalled on the fan which is able to simplify the installation process. Besides that four rubber absorbers are included to avoid loud noise is generated when the fan is spinning on the heat sink. The fan's cable is sleeved with black sleeving which looks nicer and better for cable management.

Installation, Testing & Performance

For the installation method of Coolink Chipchilla, we have taken one of our spare motherboards for providing a clearer message about it as well as its potential compatibility issue. First of all, the original stock passive or active chipset cooler need to be removed. After that please ensure the previous thermal pad/paste is removed as clean as possible to get the best result.

The motherboard we have tested here is a ULI chipset board so the push-pin and push-pin mounting arms are able to secure Coolink Chipchilla on the motherboard; place the cooler on top of the chipset and secure it with the push-pin. The push-pin mounting arm orientation can be changed if the chipset mounting holes are not aligned. The installation should only take around 5 minutes excluding the motherboard removing from the case. However since the push-pin mounting arms do not have any fix mounting holes, the cooler may not be secured firmly so it is advisable to use a thermal pad to further secure the cooler on the chipset as an additional support (thermal pad is something like double sided tape but it is designed to transfer the heat from one surface to another).

Overall we didn't encounter any difficulty during Coolink Chipchilla installation, furthermore the mounting hocks installation should be easily to be installed compare the push-pin method. However please ensure your motherboard and setup are able to support this giant chipset cooler as it may cause some compatible issue with the CPU cooler or graphic card.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink: Noctua NH-U12P
Memory: Patriot Viper PC8500 5-5-5-15
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: OEM Nvidia GeForce 9800GT 512MB
PSU: In Win Commander 750W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

Here are the cooling performance results of Coolink Chipchilla against with its stock cooler. We have tested Coolink Chipchilla without fan and fan for further performance comparison with different setups. As you can see Coolink Chipchilla is able to beat the stock cooler for both with fan or without fan setups and the performance of Coolink Chipchilla is leading very much which is the best indicator that such U-shaped giant chipset cooler works as per design and it should able to solve most of the overclocker problem especially gating by high FSB.

Conclusion

There is no doubt Coolink Chipchilla is a great motherboard chipset cooler where it is able to perform much better compare with original stock cooler and we believe this is what those computer freaks are looking for. The main reason for such great success of this cooler is the concept and design as Coolink Chipchilla can be considered as the mini version of those giant U-shaped tower CPU cooler which is still the best cooler type in the market right now. Besides that Coolink Chipchilla also comes with easy installation method, passive/active setups, quality build but its price is quite close to a moderate CPU cooler. Anyway if you have been searching for such great chipset cooler but still not able to get a ideal one then just go ahead and get this cooler as it is not easy to find such great performance chipset cooler in the market.

Pros:

+ Great performance
+ Quality product
+ Can be passive or active cooler
+ Easy installation method

Cons:

- Thermal pad should be included for better mounting support
- Higher compatibility issue

Thanks to Coolink for providing this sample for us to review.