Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Pro CPU Cooler Review
Introduction (Cont'd)
Contents
Viewed from the top Alpine 11 Pro has a simple but nice design. An interesting detail is the fact that the fan wires are very thin. The connector is a four-pin miniature type, meaning the motherboard controls the fan speed using the PWM pin.
Figure 4: Top view.
The fan retention system is amazing and you can see it in detail in Figure 5. The fan is inside a cage that pratically "hovers" over the cooler, attached to it by four soft rubber holders, standing very loose on its place. This system surely absorbs any vibration from the fan.
Figure 5: Fan holder.
The heatsink is made of pure aluminum, with no copper parts. There is no heatpipe nor any non-conventional heat conducting system. The base is plain with its surface being far from having a mirror-like finishing. The thermal compound comes preapplyed, so you just have to install the cooler on your CPU without needing to apply thermal grease. Just remember that if you are replacing the Intel stock cooler with Alpine 11 Pro you need to remove the old thermal compound from your processor before installing the new cooler, because excessive quantity of thermal grease hinders the heat flow from the CPU to the cooler.
Figure 6: Base.