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Lexcool XC-801


Date
: 10/8/05 – 03:30:18 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
Lexcool Technology Co. LTD.

Price:
$N/A MSRP

For most people,
Lexcool
is not a name you have heard of before. Until receiving their new CPU cooler, I hadn't either. They are new to the cooling game and have only been around since 2004. Based in Taiwan, Lexcool has started out by jumping into the CPU cooling ring with their initial retail offering, a heatpipe technology based CPU cooler.

Today, we look at the CPU cooler named the
XC-801
. As mentioned, the XC-801 is a heatpipe based CPU cooler that boasts an amazingly thick heatpipe placed squarely in the center of the base rated for 150Watts of heat. When I first saw the XC-801, it reminded me of another single heat pipe CPU cooler we have seen here at Overclockers Online, just not as flamboyant. I can only hope that it cools as well, let's get started.

Page 2 : Package

The Lexcool XC-801 comes in a compact and secure little package.

The Lexcool logo is proudly displayed front and center just below a cutout that shows the actual unit inside. Lexcool also puts the most important information on the front of the box displaying the ability to dissipate 150 Watts, which makes it ready for dual core CPUs.

This side of the box has the contact information for Lexcool, as well as a few specifications of the cooler, the fan and the supplied thermal compound. The design makes it a little hard to read, even when holding the box, but not to the point where you can't.

The rear of the box gives us a full shot of the cooler with some of the highlights of the design pointed out. It mentions that the mount will work with AMD K7 and K8 processors as well as 775 and 478 Intel processors. The design looks like it should work well in getting the heat off of the heatpipe and fins by way of the plastic shroud.

The opposite side of the specifications is just a list of more features. Since I will be listing these in the next section, I won't bother getting into them here. The packaging seems to be very strong and made of thick cardboard. There doesn't appear to be any damage to the package itself and this is a good indication that the contents should be secure inside.

Now I will go over the specifications and features that the package refers to.

Page 3 : Specifications

The Lexcool website has a wealth of information about the XC-801 because that is the only product they currently offer. They have a downloadable MS Word document that has all the specifications listed on the one side of the package. Here is that list:

They also have the list of features outlined on the opposite side of the package in the document.

The web site also does a good job in explaining how the heat pipe technology works. The images are a bit fuzzy but the information is still there if you choose to learn more.

Page 4 : Package Contents

Getting into the package is nice and easy. Just pop the top off the box and slide the plastic container out from the inside.

We can see that everything is packed in very well and there isn't a lot of room to move around in there. This will definitely help in limiting damage in transport. The back of the plastic is covered with a slice of cardboard that has the folded up instructions in between it and the cooler.

I have spread the contents out here to give us a good look at what comes included. The cooler comes already wrapped in the fan shroud which will just require us to mount the fan for it to be ready to go. The bag of contents looks like it is a little worse for wear, I will explain this later.

The instructions are very hard to understand because the writing is not very clear and the photos are very small. The steps are similar for the different mounts but do have noticeable differences. Unfortunately, the English instructions are all worded identically which might make the installation fun.

The fan that comes included is a standard 80mm fan with four different LEDs. It uses a three wire for connection so I will see if there is PWM control through SpeedFan during testing to see if it will allow us to change the RPM speed of the fan.

As mentioned just above, the contents of the bag that includes the mounting brackets and screws also has the thermal compound in it. Unfortunately the lid of the thermal compound didn't manage to stay on through the length of the trip and has given me one heck of a nice mess to clean up. Perhaps a separate bag for the tube would minimize the damage should this occur.

A good chunk of time later and I have all the contents cleaned and ready for presentation. We see the four silver screws for securing the mount to the motherboard and the four black screws for mounting the fan to the CPU cooler. The tube of thermal compound wasn't near empty so I guess the mess could have been much worse.

We finally get a good look at the CPU cooler itself. Again, the first thing I noticed was the fat heat pipe coming right up the center. The fan shroud funnels air from the fan towards the center and also has slots on the sides to allow air to escape maximizing heat dissipation. This should also aid in moving air around the motherboard to cool additional components.

The base comes protected with a sticker that contains a warning to remove before installation. There also seems to be some sort of residue at the edges of the base. I will attempt to clean that off before mounting the cooler.

The fan shroud comes off easily by removing a couple screws in the top piece. This reveals that huge heat pipe and cooling fins. The fins just slide on from the top and come out of the package pretty much aligned without any bends or kinks in them. This is testament to the package that it is definitely safe and secure for transport. This shot also provides us a good view of the base and gives us an idea how it secures to the mounting bracket.

I figured since I had the shroud pieces off, I might as well take a photo. The pieces are not flimsy in any way and should be a good solid surface for mounting the fan to. It is time to get to the installation. After my first look at the instructions, I might have my hands full.

Page 5 : Installation

I peeled the protective label and cleaned off the residue from the base and took this photo before re-mounting the shroud for installation.

The base has a good reflective shine to it and could still benefit from some lapping, but it still looks like it will provide a good mating surface for the CPU heat spreader.

The instructions clearly show that we will be requiring the round B bracket for mounting the K8 socket 939 processor we will be using for testing. At this point, I realized that we will only be using two of the mounting screws where as socket 754 processors will use four. I quickly became concerned because the installation required the screws to come up from underneath and this meant that the backing plate would be removed.

As I was saying, the instructions show the mounting of the bracket above the socket with the screws coming from underneath and no backing plate being used. This involves removing the motherboard to remove the stock backing plate and to install the mounting bracket.

With the motherboard out and the backing plate off, I mounted the CPU and threaded the screws into the mounting bracket a little bit as advised by the instructions before locking the cooler in place and tightening the screws to secure it. My concern with this mounting method is the lack of a backing plate. To properly secure a CPU cooler a lot of pressure is required and without a backing plate that means the entire load will be placed on the two spots where the screws are located.

This is the result and not a favorable one. As expected, the force required to get the CPU cooler secure to the point where I would be satisfied with the massive 600 grams hanging off the CPU in an upright position has caused the motherboard to bend far more than I am comfortable with. This mounting method is not only awkward because you have to tighten the screws from underneath while trying to hold the cooler upright on the CPU, but it is also very dangerous because someone who isn't really paying attention can break their motherboard quite easily if they just keep tightening.

I am a little dismayed to be honest that Lexcool would expect that their 580+ gram cooler will mount securely without a backing plate. I mean, the stock AMD HSF even mounts with a very substantial backing plate. As mentioned this design is quite difficult to actually get mounted due to the screws coming up from underneath and someone who is not aware of the dangers can easily break their motherboard. I ended up backing the screws out to where the motherboard was only slightly bent and this left the cooler loose enough to turn on the CPU with a little effort but should be secure enough to stand the motherboard in an upright position.

Much to my surprise, the fan was able to fit with the Zalman passive northbridge cooler. The cooler sits nice and high to clear all the components around the CPU and it does not, at all, interfere with the first RAM slot. The 3-Pin connection has a very long cable which is nice so if you were to run this to the front of your case to a fan controller there would be plenty of length to route it in a neat manner.

Page 6 : Performance & Testing

For testing, my system will be comprised of the following components:

Thermal Compound will be AS5 on the other coolers and the Lexcool will use the supplied thermal compound.

Components were mounted in a generic mid-tower case with the side panel off. The PSU was removed from the case and all case fans were disabled for testing.

I used the same testing method as previous CPU cooler reviews which is as follows:
Upon applying the thermal paste and mounting each cooler, the system was booted and let idle for 5 minutes while monitoring temperatures to ensure the cooler was correctly mounted. At the 5 minute mark, Prime95 was run on Torture Test Blend for 3 hours. This would guarantee that heat saturation for each cooler had occurred. At the end of the 3 hours the temperatures for the CPU and MB were recorded with data supplied by SpeedFan. I had also taped a temperature probe to the side of the NB cooler on the base and recorded the temperature at the 3 hour mark from that as well. Prime95 was then stopped and closed and the system sat idle for 1 hour with no activity except any normal Windows services and processes alongside SpeedFan. It was then that the temperatures were recorded again using the same methods for the chart below. During the testing period, room temperature remained between 23 and 24 degrees Celsius and as stated, there was no additional fans cooling the motherboard in any way.

I also mounted a thermal sensor to the backside of the closest stick of RAM to the CPU, as I have with other CPU cooler reviews. This will provide a better idea of the amount of airflow the cooler supplies to the motherboard and surrounding components. The temperature results were recorded alongside the northbridge values.

There you have it, the Lexcool XC-801 did a fine job in all aspects. The CPU temperature under load is quite comparable to the VapoChill Micro and the Vanessa L-Type and the northbridge, motherboard, and RAM cooling seem to be par or better with the other coolers. Keep in mind that the fan was turning at 3900RPM which is substantially higher than the other two and makes about the same amount of noise if not slightly more than the stock AMD64 CPU cooler.

As we can see, the fan lights up four different colors and the lights flash faster or slower depending on the speed of the fan. Personal taste will decide whether you like a single color or multi-colored fans in your case. I was not able to get SpeedFan to adjust the fan RPM but I believe that has something to do with my inept ability to figure out how to get SpeedFan to control fans. It might also have something to do with the motherboard used in testing. Either way, when hooked up to a fan control the ability to vary the fan speed is definitely available.

Page 7 : Conclusion

The biggest drawback from the Lexcool XC-801 is the mounting issues that I ran into but I have a very simple solution to alleviate the pressure on the motherboard and to make mounting a lot easier. I tried the screws in the stock mounting plate and although the threads aren't exactly the same it threads in and is secure. So I ground down two or three threads on the top of the mounting screws as seen here.

This will then allow me to thread the screws through the top of the mounting bracket and when the bracket reaches the top of the screws the screw will continue to turn because there are no threads. This will then allow the bracket to be screwed into the stock backing plate. Installation would continue as normal and when the cooler is secured installation of the fan is all that is left.

Not only will this allow the stock backing plate to be used but it would eliminate the need to remove the motherboard for installation. With this issue taken out of the equation, the Lexcool XC-801 is a solid CPU cooler. The fan does turn rather fast and is quite loud at this speed and a fan controller would really add to the value of this cooler. The cooling abilities of the XC-801 speak for themselves on the previous page and I was quite impressed with the results.

Advantages:

• Solid CPU cooling performance
• Plenty of air directed to motherboard for component cooling
• With slight modification, installation would be simple

  Disadvantages:

• Installation is difficult and dangerous without modification
• Fan speed makes a lot of noise

  Overclockers Online would like to thank Lexcool for providing the sample for this review.