Instead of the typical copper or aluminum heatsink, the Beetle uses heatpipes instead to draw heat away from the processor.
For those of you who don't know what a heatpipe is, here's an explanation. A heat pipe is a vacuum tight copper tube, with a wick and cooling fluid inside. As one heatsink gets hot, the heatpipe heats up as well. This turns the liquid into a high pressure vapor that moves toward the cooler side of the heatpipe, as the vapor reaches the cooler heatsink, it condenses and releases the heat to that heatsink. The wick helps move the liquid.
Here are a couple shots of the two fan controllers. This is a nice option that lets you decide where you want to install the fan controller. Both controllers have adequately long enough wires to reach the Beetle heatsink.
Once the Beetle is plugged in it's quite impressive to look at. It gives a computer case a unique piece of eye candy to see.
One problem that might come up when installing this beast is the amount of space it takes up. Because of the Beetles size it is possible on some motherboard configurations to get it in the way of other components such as the memory, making it difficult to swap them out with out removing the heatsink first.
To calculate the idle temperatures, I gave the computer 10 minutes on its own before writing the temperature down.
Next, using Sandra burn in wizard I allowed it to run 30 minutes and recorded the readings.
We will be comparing the Beetle to the stock Heatsink.
As you can see from the results above, the Beetle provided us some nice numbers on our machine. Even when the fan was on low speed the results weren't too shabby.
Thermaltake's Beetle is a unique looking heatsink/fan combo that definitely is up to the job of cooling. Also, the fact that you can use the Beetle on Intel P4 478/775, and AMD K7, and K8 processors, allows you to easily transfer the heatsink to your next computer and save you money.
Pros:
-Unique design
-Heatpipes
-Copper base
-Option of two fan controllers
-Option to mount an extra 80mm fan
Cons:
-Motherboard must be removed to install
-May obstruct other components inside the case
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