Well, as we all know, Taiwan companies and their ever-growing R&D plus engineering departments on both sides of Taiwan Strait are getting stronger - just look at the efficiency advances in last month's aluminum heat sink comparison.

The visitor to the "dying of old age" show called CeBIT could see another interesting proof of this rapid advance - a unique "ancient fan" looking, large, massive all-copper V1 fan from Thermaltake, one of better-known names in the cooling industry. The Vii is a direct competitor to Zalman's top end CNPS9700LED offering, yet at a price roughly 30 per cent less than to 9700's US$80 - 90 price range.

Would it match Zalman's excellent performance, though? After all, both fans use similar-sized 110 mm fans with adjustable speed (I never use that, always setting the fans to maximum rpm), and both are true heavyweights: Thermaltake at 637 grams, and Zalman at a whopping 764 grams.

Well, I compared the Chinese fan against the Korean wheel in real life this time. Two plaforms were used: Intel 975XBX board with one of those old "full overclock" BIOSes, using Intel Pentium965 Extreme Edition dual-core 3.73 GHz CPU running at 4.27 GHz and FSB 1066, and our new reference, the QX6700 quad-core Intel running at 3.33 GHz and FSB 1667 on ECS Nforce 680i mainboard - see photos. Both CPUs are in the 150W - 160W TDP range.

I measured the temperatures in BIOS monitor (idle for 10 minutes) as well as Windows (idle state, and during the 3DMark06 CPU benchmark run, which brings up the CPU heat tremendously). So, what did we get?

Surprisingly, in the BIOS monitor, Thermaltake's offering was about the same as Zalman on the Pentium (48 C vs 48 C), while exceeding Zalman by 1-2 C heat removal on the quad-core (50 C vs 51 C). I actually expected Zalman to still hold a bit of lead here. In Windows, idle mode was also a draw between the two rivals (53 C and 54 C on Pentium, and 55 C both on quad), but full-throttle run during 3DMark06 saw Thermaltake take a lead over Zalman by up to 2 degrees C - from 65 C to 67 C on the Pentium and 68 C to 70 C on the quad.

I don't know whether the Chinese ancient, time-proven fan shape has some special airflow properties (besides, of course, having the actual fan in between the two heat sink halves for more efficient cooling), but, for two heat sinks of about the same size, the "equal or better" performance of Thermaltake vs noticeably more expensive top-end Zalman was a surprise to me.

Also, I'd prefer Thermaltake not to use direct mobo plugs (similar to Intel stock fans) for Socket 775, which tend to bend the mainboard - but the approach that Zalman and Asus use on their fans, with a mezzanine plate screwed tightly with the mainboard through a back-plate. That imposes a bit less stress on the PCB, but complicates the heat sink replacement - you got to take out the mainboard.

In summary, two heat sinks with very similar performance, where Thermaltake's uniquely engineered shape seems to compensate well for slightly less copper weight - not to forget the price advantage. The message is, the Taiwanese are coming back to reclaim the cooling crowns in all areas - air-cool today, water-cool tomorrow, freeze-cool the day after? µ