Supplied by AMK Computer

First Impressions

I dropped in at
my favorite place to spend money the other day, href="http://www.amkcomputers.bc.ca/"
target=_blank>AMK Computers, and they said “Give this
a try”. It always starts that way doesn’t it? At first glance I thought the
ADDA B53 CPU Cooler was rather plain and boxy. It didn’t have funky lines
or was made out of copper. How could something looking so boring be cool?
It looked rather dull with the exception of the cowling for the fan. The
fan itself didn’t say cooling to me either. At only 60×60x10mm it seemed
rather inadequate. So I put it up against my beloved WBK38 and prepared
for B53 to run away in flames. I couldn’t have been so wrong.

Meet the ADDA B53
CPU Cooler; an unassuming entry by ADDA with a fan that puts out a modest 20
decibels. In layman’s terms this is a quiet, I mean very quiet, AMD approved
CPU heatsink/fan combo.

It just doesn’t
look gizmo and that may be ADDA’s undoing in the marketplace. On the
shelf you may pick up this heatsink and put it back in favor of the more high
tech looking heatsinks with the larger and more powerful fans. First
impressions can be everything and this heatsink/fan combo gives a subtle first
impression. But looks are deceiving.

What do you get?

Basically you get
a heatsink/fan combination. It comes in four parts: the aluminum
heatsink, fan cowling, clip, and the fan itself. The heatsink measures
63mm. Wide by 74mm. long which is only 1mm. shy of the WBK38. But it
is much taller measuring 68mm. in height with the fan attached. This
is roughly the same height as the WBK38 but the ADDA is mostly heatskink in
height while the WBK38 gives up a fair amount of its height to the stock 25mm.
fan. This makes me assume that the ADDA fan has more surface area thus
greater heat dissipation.

The clip is where,
in my opinion, ADDA beats out the WBK38. It is a one-piece construction
with a slot or grip for the end of a flat blade screwdriver. A screwdriver
is necessary to attach the clip but as always be careful that you don’t add
any new ghetto holes to your motherboard. Mounting and removing the
heatsink was very easy compared to the poorly designed clip of the WBK38.
I had the heatsink mounted and removed in a third of the time with less stress
compared to the WBK38.

The ADDA B53 one piece clip design	Mounts the same as many other Heatsinks

The WBK38 does win out for basic fan mounting. Yes the ADDA fan easily
attaches with four screws from the top but that’s it. The cowling only
fits one type of fan. Attaching other fans means disposing of the cowling
and using longer screws through the thicker 60 x 60mm. fans. Mounting
a larger fan, 80mm. and above, is almost impossible as there is no place to
attach a larger fan on the stock ADDA heatsink. I’m sure a dremel notch
in the four corners would take care of a custom wire spring clip setup.
I have found the WBK38 user friendly for mounting 60, 80, and 92mm. fans.
But you didn’t buy the ADDA B53 to change fans. You bought it for the
very quiet stock 20db. ADDA fan.

WBK38 same area but less height	ADDA B53 – note those skyscraper fins
Looks high tech	Looks boxy. Did I mention those tall fins!

The bottom of the
heatsink came from the factory with the standard issue square of pink goop
otherwise known as the thermal pad. This is necessary for AMD approval
along with the clip delivering over 16lbs. of chip crushing pressure.
If you know your heatsinks well enough to be shopping around I suggest you
remove this stuff immediately and use thermal paste. It does come off
easily which is more than I can say about other heatsinks where a hammer and
chisel was almost needed. The factory finish was smooth to the touch
but there were visible imperfections. A large majority of heatsinks
don’t come with the mirror finishes that lapping can provide so there’s nothing
new here. I have already lapped the WBK38 for comparison. For
those of you not familiar with lapping it is the process of sanding the bottom
of the heatsink with progressively finer sandpaper finally finishing with
a rubbing compound to give the smoothest and flatest possible surface for
the best contact with the CPU. This lapping process rids the heatsink
of surface imperfections plus levels the contact area. Many times heatsinks
don’t come from the factory with perfectly flat contact areas.

WBK38 lapped surface – shiny	ADDA B53 factory surface

ADDA B53 contact area – slightly pitted and scratched. Smooth to the touch though.

Just for kicks here’s the WBK38 with the 92mm fan

The tests

First a little
background. In the WBK38 three way fan shootout I featured three types
of fans mounted on the Globalwin WBK38 heatsink. These will be used
for comparison against the ADDA B53.

Test setup

• 24″ tower
  
• 450 watt
  power supply unit (PSU)
  
• Abit KT7A-Raid
  with a 900mhz T-bird @ default
  
• 768 Mb
  SDRAM Cas3 PC133
  
• Heatsink
  mounted with Arctic Silver II thermal paste
  
• Matrox
  G450 Video card dual head
  
• Aopen
  modem
  
• SB live
  value
  
• 30 GB
  Maxtor Diamond HD
  
• 1 x floppy

• 1 x internal
  100mb zip
  
• Win2k
  sp2

Norton Antivirus Disk Scan was executed and Sisoft Sandra Burn-in (CPU Benchmark/CPU
Multi-Media Benchmark) was run for 20 consecutive times to achieve load conditions.
Tests were run twice. Via Hardware Monitor and Motherboard monitor were
used to monitor temperatures. Remember that only the power supply fan, cpu
fan and northbridge blorb are in operation during these tests. Adding more
case fans will affect overall temperatures. Ambient temperature for these
tests was 24.8 degrees celsius plus/minus 0.2 degrees.

The Results

Without any further adieu here they are.

Adda has come into
the fight swinging with the stock fan (sf) matching WBK38 with the YS Tech
fan (YS). The WBK38 with the Globalwin (GW) stock fan and also with
the Sanyo Denki (SD) 92mm fan managed to pull the WBK38 into the lead.
But when you put the 92mm 55.1 CFM Sanyo Denki fan on the ADDA B53 it
became a different story. The ADDA was edged out only by 1 degree celsius
from being the top performer. Side by side the with the Sanyo Denki fan the
ADDA B53 and Globalwin WBK38 match up pretty evenly in temperature tests.
It is important to note that In this race the WBK38 was lapped while the ADDA
CPU Cooler was not. I’m positive that with a little treatment the ADDA
CPU Cooling fan could give the WBK38 with the Sanyo Denki fan a run for it’s
money. Even though I did state that it was very difficult to mount larger
fans on the ADDA B53 I did manage to hang the fan by a wing and a prayer for
the duration of these tests. Not something I recommend for the long haul though.

How quickly the
cooling fan returns the system to idle temperature is equally as important
as how efficiently it controls the peak temperatures. This too may have influence
on your buying choice.

Conclusion

So would I buy
the ADDA CPU Cooler? Well yes and no. If I were aiming for a heatsink/fan
combination that was VERY quiet I would say yes. The stock ADDA B53 did
as well as the WBK38/YS Tech combination plus is 6 decibels quieter. The
ADDA B53 also proved to be more efficient at dissipating heat than the WBK38/YS
Tech combination.

The WBK38/stock
46.5 decibel fan is just too loud in my opinion. This is where the WBK38
with a 92mm. Sanyo Denki fan wins in both cooling efficiency and peak control
but not by much. Surprisingly, to my ears, the noise level is the very
much the same even though they are 16 decibels apart but that is purely a personal
observational.

ADDA has definitely
made a good heatsink. It’s extremely quiet and comparatively efficient.
It gives the WBK38 a good scare and if you have paid attention to other guides
on the net this places the ADDA B53 ahead of a lot of other heatsink/fan combinations.
When I kicked in the rest of my case fans I was able to bring the CPU idle
temperature down to 27 celsius and the motherboard temperature down to 25 degrees
celsius. Not bad.

Lastly the price
is a big plus. It’s the cheaper of the two heatsinks coming in at 35 dollars
Canadian or about 23 dollars US.

Thanks to AMK
Computers for providing the ADDA B53. They have it plus many other
heatsink/fan combinations in stock. href="http://www.amkcomputers.bc.ca/" target=_blank>AMK
can have product delivered almost anywhere…even overnight. And the US to Canadian
exchange rate is always a bonus.

Final Thoughts

This is ADDA’s
new entry into the marketplace and very few are carrying it at the moment. If
you are looking for an extremely quiet and efficient HSF at a great price then
this is definitely one to consider. The ADDA B53 has an easy to mount spring
clip and a very easy on the ears fan that puts it on par with the competition
equipped with their lower db fans. For the overclocking crowd this is not an
“as is” stock solution. But for those overclocking on a budget who are handy
with a dremel and a bit of engineering who can figure out a good way to mount
a larger, quieter and higher CFM fan then this may be an alternative as it faced
off quite well against the WBK38. We score it 83%.