Should you buy it? $10 Deepcool Ebay CPU Cooler

[TheMechEngineer]

THE PRODUCT

 

US$10 CPU cooler from Ebay with Deepcool branding, from Hong Kong.

Apparently designed to fit damn near all CPUs and sockets, everything from the Celeron to the Core i7, to AMD processors and a comparably large array of CPU sockets.

Too good to be true? Glad you asked, 'cause I bought one for my Core 2 Duo build.

I'll also mention as well, this is my first ever aftermarket cooler (I've only used stock coolers), which makes this more interesting....

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Support-intel-LGA775-1155-1156-1150-CPU-Cool-Cooling-Heatsink-PC-Cooler-Dual-Fan-/171914354186?hash=item2806e4de0a

 

 

 

THE STUFF YOU GET

 

I got mine after about 2 weeks, which is kinda what you'd expect for a cheap item.

The stuff inside the box is also....what you'd expect for the price.

No instructions, just a mounting bracket, some pins and the cooler itself with the fan attached.

Thermal compound is also already on the heatsink as you can see, but I'll be using my own thermal paste (Arctic MX-2).

 

 

 

 

 

 

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS AND QUALITY

 

In short, not too bad for the cost.

The first thing I noticed is that the CPU contact area isn't machined flat like on high-end heatsinks.

The heatsink works with two copper pipes, a solid aluminium block for the CPU contact area, and the heatsink itself is made of thin aluminium blades.

 

 

EASE OF INSTALLATION

 

There are no instructions, but installation is pretty straightforward.

Bracket in first, pins in second and then it's just the knuckle-busting step of clipping on the actual heatsink itself.

I noticed that removing the heatsink is much harder though, and found that I had to poke the pins back through the motherboard from the back, since un-clipping it was too difficult.

 

 

YEAH YEAH....BUT HOW DOES IT PERFORM?

 

These are the tests I conducted:

1. Stock cooler at idle on the desktop.
2. Stock cooler while running IntelBurnTest for 5 runs.
3. Deepcool cooler at idle on the desktop.
4. Deepcool cooler while running IntelBurnTest for 5 runs.

All temperatures are recorded using MSI Afterburner (except for ambient).

Since I'm using a dual core, I'm recording maximum temperatures for each CPU core.

And here's the results:

 

STOCK COOLER AT IDLE

     Ambient = 22.3°C (72.1°F)

     CPU1 = 37°C (98.6°F)

     CPU2 = 32°C (89.6°F)

 

STOCK COOLER INTEL BURN TEST 5 RUNS

     Ambient = 22.3°C (72.1°F)

     CPU1 = 71°C (159.8°F)

     CPU2 = 69°C (156.2°F)

 

DEEPCOOL COOLER AT IDLE

     Ambient = 22.7°C (72.8°F)

     CPU1 = 31°C (87.8°F)

     CPU2 = 28°C (82.4°F)

 

DEEPCOOL COOLER INTEL BURN TEST 5 RUNS

     Ambient = 22.7°C (72.8°F)

     CPU1 = 58°C (136.4°F)

     CPU2 = 58°C (136.4°F)

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

I will mention that I'm running a Core 2 Duo on a Pentium stock cooler, so that's why temperatures were kinda high with the stock cooler.

Oh yeah, and both coolers were installed with my Arctic MX-2 thermal compound, so I made sure that wasn't a factor.

 

Over 10°C difference is pretty massive, but it gets better because the Deepcool cooler seems to plateau at it's highest temperature much quicker than the stock cooler. It doesn't get heatsoaked.

This would probably be due to the stock cooler being entirely aluminium, since copper is more efficient at conducting heat away from the CPU.

 

So should you buy it? For a cheaper build, yes. For sure.

It's much better than I expected, decent for the price, performs well in a cheap build, and should even allow for a decent overclock.

But for the love of all that is holy, don't get it for a Core i7 build. Or anything expensive. That's just not smart, okay?

 

TL;DR: Surprisingly good performer, much better than I expected. Worth considering for a cheap build.

[don_svetlio]

Ewww, only 4 heatpipes. for only 10 more I get 6-8 heatpipes (long live Arcitc Cooling and their cheap piles of metal )

[TheGeeker]

How loud?

[TheMechEngineer]

Ewww, only 4 heatpipes. for only 10 more I get 6-8 heatpipes (long live Arcitc Cooling and their cheap piles of metal )

 

Yep, there are some pretty good deals out there.

The Ebay solution is for more like....if you're willing to screw every penny.

 

 

How loud?

 

A little louder, yeah. Not too bad though.

My Core 2 Duo is kinda obnoxious to begin with though, so the difference is harder to discern.

[TheMechEngineer]

For those people interested in how far you can push the limits of this thing, I've put it to work and overclocked my Core 2 Duo to 3.6GHz with voltage sitting at 1.312V (I think stock is 1.225V).

 

I was able to maintain stability with the IntelBurnTest, and got the following temperatures:

 

Ambient = 23.2 degrees C (73 F)

CPU1 = 76 degrees C (168.8 F)

CPU2 = 77 degrees C (170.6 F)

 

I reckon going to 3.8GHz would be pushing it too far.

For my Core 2 Duo build though, it works quite well because I don't really need to overclock very high anyway.

[Blebekblebek]

Just in case someone need to know what is the product

it is IceEdge Mini FS

again, this is mini version of Ice Edge which retailed at @$25, while this one retailed at $10-12

the first version is already EOL

http://www.deepcool.com/product/cpucooler/2014-05/7_869.shtml

they did this a lot with their lineup, either rebrand, rebadge, or complete overhaul over their product.

 

Fans use Hydro bearing, so it's pretty quiet if you compare it with stock cooler, it's more like regular 12cm case fans sound, you will notice it, but it won't bother you that much.

it may not popular in other country, but in SEA, stock cooler of intel/amd processor often replaced or packed with Deepcool HSF.

 

and their 12/14cm fans always out of stock whenever I tried to purchase it, so there's that.

 

here's a bit more detail

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1049748

 

it's quite old review, but pretty much similar with v2.

[Sauron]

Whily you're at it, why not make a little experiment? Get a second one and solder them both to a copper plate, then place the plate on the cpu. See if temperatures improve in any way

[TheMechEngineer]

Whily you're at it, why not make a little experiment? Get a second one and solder them both to a copper plate, then place the plate on the cpu. See if temperatures improve in any way

 

Possibly. I don't really have the time to do much custom stuff, unfortunately.

 

One problem I have noticed is that the motherboard North Bridge chipset heatsink is no longer getting any air from the CPU fan and is getting quite hot. A bit of a problem when I want to overclock which would probably make it even hotter.

I might need to figure out some ducting technology to re-direct some airflow if it needs more cooling, because I can't be bothered using yet another fan.

[Sauron]

Possibly. I don't really have the time to do much custom stuff, unfortunately.

 

One problem I have noticed is that the motherboard North Bridge chipset heatsink is no longer getting any air from the CPU fan and is getting quite hot. A bit of a problem when I want to overclock which would probably make it even hotter.

I might need to figure out some ducting technology to re-direct some airflow if it needs more cooling, because I can't be bothered using yet another fan.

 

something tells me this thing wasn't built with overclocking in mind

[TheMechEngineer]

something tells me this thing wasn't built with overclocking in mind

 

lol nope, the architecture is very old but interestingly enough it does allow changing the CPU multipliers and voltage in BIOS.

Right now I'm just using a short straw (0.8cm diameter) to carry hot air from the chipset heatsink to the exhaust fan.

What's even funnier is that the straw slides straight into the fan clips on heatsink and is held on nicely without any tape, so it's almost like the designers thought of this

[TheMechEngineer]

UPDATE: I've spent some time tweaking my BIOS settings and other things to optimize how well the CPU cooler works.

 

First thing was dealing with the overheating North Bridge chipset. Having the cooler mounted in the normal orientation (fan blowing out toward the back of the case) meant that the chipset heatsink was in stagnant air, causing it to become too hot.

The solution was to rotate the cooler 90 degrees clockwise, so that the heatsink is sideways, with the fan underneath and blowing air up towards the top of the case through the heatsink. Sure it's not as aesthetically pleasing (might try to grab a pic soon), but the airflow setup is much more efficient now. Now everything is being cooled properly including the RAM, CPU and motherboard, so it's a great setup now for overclocking.

 

Speaking of overclocking, I tweaked the settings and came away with MUCH better results. I raised the CPU clock speed to 3.8GHz and set voltages to Manual, with 1.225V on the CPU core. The end result is a stable CPU running at 24.6Gflops, with peak temperatures at about 65 degrees Celcius.

I'm going to tweak it again to reach the magical 4.0GHz speed, because clearly I haven't actually hit the limit yet.

[kbhasi]

^oC (72.1 ^oF)

No need to use all those "sup" tags

Copy and paste: °

(also because Tapatalk can't interpret a number of bbcode, so I saw "oC" instead)

this is why character map is there, or character viewer if you're on a mac

[TheMechEngineer]

No need to use all those "sup" tags

Copy and paste: °

(also because Tapatalk can't interpret a number of bbcode, so I saw "oC" instead)

this is why character map is there, or character viewer if you're on a mac

 

No problem, thanks. It was the best I could do lol

[TheMechEngineer]

UPDATE #2: I've finished overclocking the processor now, and reached a final overclock of 4.0GHz with good stability.

 

It required pushing the voltage up by a beefy margin from 1.225V to 1.325V to achieve stability, but now it's at a solid 26.3Gflops at 75 degrees Celcius maximum temperature.

Pretty decent considering it's still using the Ebay CPU heatsink.

[Nup]

lol, i'v always been curious about those uber cheap cooler, nice review.  

[Jumper118]

Ewww, only 4 heatpipes. for only 10 more I get 6-8 heatpipes (long live Arcitc Cooling and their cheap piles of metal )

4 heatpipes? i can only see two. 

[Jumper118]

think of it as 2 pipes, split in 2, 2 per side: 4 halfpipes

yes i can see that, but its only 2 heatpipes. otherwise my silver arrow would have 16. 

[iamdarkyoshi]

Whily you're at it, why not make a little experiment? Get a second one and solder them both to a copper plate, then place the plate on the cpu. See if temperatures improve in any way

I got bored one day and soldered four coolers onto an old dell heatsink with four heat pipes. Damn thing weighs a friggin ton. Never did try it though