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Speeze RaptorCool I™
Review Date: April 18, 2003
Reviewed by: Chad Rose
Sponsored by: Speeze.com
If you have never heard of Speeze they are based in China, with a head office in the US and branch offices abroad. They also have over 10 years experience in the PC cooling market. I have never personally owned a Speeze product but have heard good things about them. So I am looking forward to the results from this review.
Living in the era of faster processors, overclocking for fun and the need for maximum performance for gaming we are on a seemingly never ending quest for better cooling on our processors. I do believe that CPU cooling has to be rated at the top of everyones list and may even be one of the hottest items for sale on the market today. Well enough with the small talk, let's get this thing going!
Specifications from Speeze website:
- Socket A Cooling kit
- Dimensions: Heat sink : 12VDC Fan : 80×80×44 mm (l × w × h) 80×80×25mm
- Bearing: Ball Bearing
- Rated speed: 2300 RPM +/-10%
- Rated power: 1.08 W
- Noise level: 25.0 dBA
- Air flow: 27.99 CFM
- Current: 0.09 Amp
- Life hours: Ball: 50.000
- Features: Copper based heat sink
- Connector: 3 Pin, mainboard
- Application: All Socket A
- Thermal resistance: 0.53 °C/W
- Thermal type: White grease pre-applied
- Clip model: 0606600 Spring-Type
Well as you can see this is what I received. Something I like alot when I receive hardware in the mail is good packaging. Well this wasn't just good it was excellent! It was packed in a sturdy cardboard box and once opened I was amazed at how much care was taken to deliver this product in mint condition to my doorstep. I also like the fact that they sent a full color catalog showing their full line of products and also send a couple of extra accessories to remind you of them.
The package the cooler came in is well built and displays this product quite nicely. On the back of the package I noticed they have printed assembly instructions with pictures to follow for step by step installation. The package itself is the easy to open bubble tab folding type that you don't have to destroy to get your product out of.
I immediately noticed how lightweight this heatsink and fan combo was. I also noticed the unique design of the fins. I believe the fins are built in such a way that they shed heat off at the peak. The 80mm fan is a nice improvement compared to other heatsinks that only have a 60mm fan. For those of us on a budget it surely saves us from having to scrounge to buy an adapter to upgrade to larger ones. I like the idea that Speeze products are made only by them and not from 3rd parties. This way I know everything is matched for maximum performance. Well I can't wait! Let's get to the installation!
Installation
First I carefully removed the assembly from the package. There is a protective cover protecting the thermal paste but I smudged it up a little during photography. I would like to point out the decent machine work done to the bottom of this heatsink before I strap it to my processor.
Not too shabby on the machine work. Once I had the protective cover removed I carefully placed the assembly over my processor being careful to properly align the clips that will be holding the heatsink down. By the way I really like this type of clip. I then used my fingers to clip the backend of the clip to the tabs on the processor socket. After that was done I then took my screwdriver and carefully pushed down and engaged the spring clip to the tabs on the other side of the socket pushing down and outwards just a bit. I know its difficult to see what I am doing in the picture but if you look closely you might be able to.
There, that was easy enough. This is what it looks like installed.
Not bad looking is it. The next thing of importance before firing the rig back up is to make sure to plug your 3-pin connector into your cpu fan pins on your motherboard.
For those that may not have a 3-pin connector on their motherboard they do ship an additional 80mm fan that has either the 3-pin or 4-pin molex connector option. So you won't have to run down to your local computer shop to find a 3-pin to 4-pin molex adapter. After I double checked my installation it's ready to go. So lets get some testing underway.
Testing
System:
- MSI K7T Turbo2 Rev.
- AMD XP2100+ Retail Overclocked to 1.95Ghz
- 1X 512MB PC133 SDRAM
- 1X Maxtor 60GB ATA100 7200RPM Harddrive
- PowerColor GeForce 4 MX440 64mb DDR
- 300 Watt PSU
- Lite-on 16X DVD Drive
- HP CD-Writer 8x12x40
- Realtek 8139 NIC Card
- WindowsXP Professional SP1
- Ambient room temp = 68F
- BattleField 1942 Dedicated Server for load testing.
I was extremely pleased right from the start by the low noise level which is synonymous with Speeze cooling. I mean this setup is eerily quiet, sometimes just to make yourself comfortable you will be checking to see if it's on or not. The heatsink I normally use is OEM from AMD and the fan is a Thermaltake SmartFan II that wrenches out a ton of air about 76cfm to be exact with the fan set to a very noisy 4600rpm, and the fan is mounted to my heatsink with a 60mm to 80mm adapter.
With the fan only running around 2300rpm and only 28cfm of air I am not expecting alot of cooling power. But, with the Raptor, you barely hear any fan noise, and it seems it would be the perfect setup for the bedroom or for those that can't stand fan noise.
Temperatures
The overall temperature differences between my old heatsink and this new unit aren't much different. But still I am amazed because of the specification similiarities and the differences between the two fans are tremendous in comparison to CFM and RPM. This goes to show you that the high quality workmanship and testing done by Speeze must have taken a while to put together this little setup. Well let's take a look at the idle temperature readings for both after one hour:
As you can see there isn't much difference between the two. Now lets take a look at it's efficiency in a load comparison running Battlefield 1942 Dedicated Server for one hour:
I absolutely cannot believe the temperature differences under load. To think that I hardly ever monitor my cpu temperatures and I game practically every night. Well you know what? This Raptor is staying put until something better comes along! I am just stunned that my processor was running at this temperature under extreme load. This just goes to show that Speeze does put together a uniquely quiet high performance heatsink/fan combo!! Of course I wish I had another heatsink to use for testing because there has to be something wrong with my old setup to get these values. Let's not waste time and move along. Now, I am thinking, I wonder how this would stack up with some overclocking? Let's go and find out.
Overclocking
Currently my processor is just set at its stock clock (1729mhz/133fsb with x13/multiplier). You already know the OEM temperatures from the previous tests so lets not go there considering the expected heat index. Now what I am going to do is increase my FSB to 150 which is the highest I can currently go and be stable. This will give me 1950mhz for this test. I will do the testing in both idle and load for approximately one hour like the last tests. Let's see how it goes.
Well as you can see I got the exact same cpu temperatures at stock clock and overclocked! So this heatsink may be alright for overclocking. I am very suprised at the temperatures I have seen with this heatsink considering the fan barely puts out 28cfm.
Conclusion:
I don't know what to say. I am glad that I found out that my old heatsink isn't up to doing the job I thought it was doing. The Speeze Raptor I is an impressive cpu cooler. The installation was a breeze. No awkward downward force was used to clip it to the socket tabs. I liked the look, weight and feel of the Raptor. The other thing I find to be outstanding is the fact that you can hardly hear it with the low rpm fan. The engineering of the Raptor was well thought out and made it a capable performer in a competitive market. I can whole heartedly recommend this product to just about everyone. The only recommendation I might make is to upgrade the fan in case you get higher temperatures or are extremely overclocked. I really don't know if I would have seen these temperatures if the room was alot warmer. Anyhow, I am giving the Raptor 4 out of 5 X's. I took one away because of the lack of pricing information on the web or their website. Seems to me their primary market is overseas. Overall an outstanding performer though!!
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