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Auras T6C Golden Heatsink Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Introduction
The days of the simple heatsink are numbered. With the increased speed and heat output of today's computers more efficient and radical heatsink designs will be introduced. One such design idea is the heat pipe. Much like how you can pipe water from one part of your house to another you can move heat in a similar manner with the aid of a copper tube and a slight vacuum. The principal is fairly simple, heat from the hot side of the pipe will quickly move to the cold end to equalize the internal pressure. The only problem is that heat pipes require a fairly pronounced temperature difference to begin working in an efficient manner.
As the introduction suggests the Auras T6C Golden is a heat pipe enabled heatsink designed for the Pentium 4. Much of the heatsink is positioned up and away from the CPU and explains the excessive height of the T6C. The radiator is very open and consists of a series of very thin copper sheets spanning between 4 vertical copper heat pipes. A pressure connection is used to attach each radiator fin with no apparent fusing of material; this is fairly typical of most heat pipe radiators.
The base of the Auras heatsink is comprised of an aluminum base with a thin copper conductor. The heat pipes are connected directly to the copper at the center of the conductor plate.
Some may wonder why the copper base plate is so thin, I suspect that it was done purposefully to force most of the heat out of the copper and into the heat pipe, sounds simple but seems to make sense.
Some may wonder why the copper base plate is so thin, I suspect that it was done purposefully to force most of the heat out of the copper and into the heat pipe, sounds simple but seems to make sense.
Mounting hardware is consists of two pressure clips that mount directly to the stock Pentium 4 heatsink cage. These clips are not very different from what you can see on the CoolJag CJC665C just removable and slightly harder to work with.
Also included with the heatsink is a tube of 25% silver thermal compound and a thermally responsive fan controller with RPM alarm. This is a very nice little item that helps to control fan noise and with a little work you can even mount the thermal probe directly to the copper base plate under the fan.
The Auras T6C Golden comes with a fancy and quiet LED fan. Specs: 3800RPM, 33CFM, 32dB(A), and 4 bright blue LEDs. 
Fan operation is actually very quiet and for a number of reasons. The first and most important is RPM, at 4000RPM the noise level is inherently less than most other 70mm solutions. Second considering the open nature of the radiator there are very few areas available to create turbulence and excess noise. Next to the OEM Intel cooler this is one of the quietest fan combos around.
Fan operation is actually very quiet and for a number of reasons. The first and most important is RPM, at 4000RPM the noise level is inherently less than most other 70mm solutions. Second considering the open nature of the radiator there are very few areas available to create turbulence and excess noise. Next to the OEM Intel cooler this is one of the quietest fan combos around.