CoolJag Falcon 92 Cu HeatPipe Heatsink Review
By: Michael Phrakaysone

When I sit back and reflect on processor technology, it’s amazing how far it has advanced over the years, and it seems like it’s done so with a quantum leap; single core processors, dual core and now quad core CPU’s.  It’s just really amazing how fast and how soon all these advancements have come.  Microprocessor makers have tried to alleviate the problem associated with making faster processors (that is heat) with shrinking the die of the cores and for the most part it has worked to keep maximum thermal temperatures at a workable level, although having a quad core will push any heatsink to its limits, especially once overclocked.

Today I will be reviewing the CoolJag Falcon 92 Cu Heatpipe Heatsink.  The Falcon 92 Cu is CoolJag’s latest offering to both Intel and AMD users and will be our first CoolJag product review.  And having tested this heatsink in our new workbench consisting of the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 spitting out easily 100W of juice we’ll see if this heatsink can cool down or crashes and burns.  Oh yeah, overclocked results @ 3.0GHz are included (spitting out well over 100 watts of heat) so read on to see how the Falcon performs.

Specifications

Weight: 736g
Dimension: 106 x 122 x 111 mm

DC FAN
2 LED + PWM + Smart Fan
(1200RPM ~ 2500RPM ± 10%)
Auto Fan speed control by system temperature
Fan Size: 92 X 25mm dBA: 18dB ~ 27dBA
Bearing System: Two Ball Bearing

Heatsink
Material:  Aluminum Fin + Skiving Copper Base Pure Copper - Base
Pure Copper - Heat Pipe
Pure Aluminum  Skived Heat Sink
Pure Copper Fins

The Falcon 92 Cu comes in an attractive black corrugated box with the heatsink being wrapped inside plastic blister smack in the middle and offers a description and specification of this heatsink on the rear of the box.  The words “Multi Core Ready” are showcased on the side of the box.

Opening the box reveals that you’ll receive the Falcon Cu 92 heatsink, instruction manual, Shin-Etsu thermal paste, thermal paste spreader, and respective brackets for both AMD and Intel installations.  The included bracket that you see is for Intel installations only, and that leaves AM2 and K8 folks to use their current back plate for installation.

Looking at the heatsink, it is indeed a beautiful creation.  This heatsink has four heatpipes that dissipates heat through the copper base and aluminum flower type heatsink.  The hot air rises and is blown away by the 92mm fan cooling through the array of skived fins.  Copper is the material of choice that makes up this product and the only aluminum used is the one securing the heatpipes to the copper base. 

This heatsink is very wide and may possibly cause some trouble mounting on motherboards that have huge heatpipes.  The construction of this heatsink is top notch, nowhere were their visible flaws of any kind, the only small thing is that some of the skived fins were bent upon delivery but can be easily fixed by bending into place.

The base of the heatsink is covered by plastic from the factory which is always a nice touch because sometimes I’ve seen bases that are gouged because there is no protection from touching the cardboard packaging.

The fan is a two-ball bearing design (not sleeve bearing which is quieter) and is not the usual type, it’s integrated on the heatsink via small bracket.  Eventually if this fan fails, I’m not sure how one would replace it but it’s highly unlikely you’ll need to replace it for years.  The downfall of having a non-standard fan is that users cannot upgrade this fan in any way.  What you see is what you get, no upgrading to a faster fan if desired. 

If you read the specifications, you’ll know that this fan has the ability to increase in speed once it realizes that temperatures have increased or senses the increase of heat.  You’ll notice in the pictures a green sensor underneath the fan blades.  Umm shouldn’t this sensor be located at least beside the copper base?  You pretty much were correct, I don’t know why CoolJag believed placing the sensor this far up the heatsink would do any good, but we’ll see what the results are with the sensor being located in such a puzzling location.

Testing

I will be testing this heatsink on the new 2008 ModSynergy PC Build.  Consisting of the Intel Quad Core Q6600 spitting out easily 100W of heat, you’re right to guess that this CPU will test and tax how good a particular heatsink is, especially if it’s overclocked to 3GHz.  I’m not sure how many watts this CPU spits out at 3GHz, but I’m going to make a wild unscientific guess and say 125watts.  Motherboard is the Asus P5K-E/Wi-Fi AP Edition.

Thermal compound used in this review was Arctic Silver 5.  The heatsink was broken in for well over 200 hours so that the thermal compound was operating under optimal condition.  Ambient temperature of when readings were recorded was around 24 degrees Celsius. 

I ran OCCT 2.0.0a to load the CPU for 10 minutes and recorded the CPU core values under load seen in SpeedFan 4.3.3.  I noticed SpeedFan reads the CPU temperature incorrectly than in the BIOS, it reads 4 degrees less than what the temperature in the BIOS reads.  When adding 4 degrees to my results, it goes hand in hand of what OCCT reports. 

Idle temperatures were completed by letting the system do nothing for a 10 minute span.

Results

The Falcon 92 Cu gives decent results under the stock speed of 2.4GHz, it’s higher than what I’m used to since I’m coming from an AMD 3500+ Venice, but these results aren’t too bad.  They are still under the thermal limits advised by Intel; being 71 degrees Celsius.  

Noise levels were low; I couldn’t really hear any other noise over my other case fans.  So it can be deemed silent. 

Now the results when the Q6600 is overclocked to 3GHz are literally scary for me, haha.  As I kept watching the temperature reading, it kept on rising, rising and it was only until it reached 66 degrees Celsius did I stop OCCT.  Mind you OCCT didn’t even run for a whole 10 minutes but only managed half of that.  What does this tell me?  The Falcon Cu 92 can handle stock speeds fine, but its thermal load limits are reached (and then some) when the Q6600 is overclocked to 3.0GHz.

But the funny thing is that the RPM’s always stayed around 1310RPM.  Actually it’s not really funny because this is the result of the puzzling decision by CoolJag to place the sensor underneath the fan blades.  That’s such a bad place to put it and I’m sure if they elected to have changed their design and utilized a regular fan and provided a manual fan control, results would have been better across the board.

Conclusion

My thoughts are mixed.  One part of me says this cooler is a good one, another part of me says it’s not really good if it can’t handle a Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz.  The unit is quiet, looks really nice and installs rather simply.  The fan is quiet due to the fact that it’s running around 1300RPM’s because of the poorly placed sensor. 

Fact of the matter is that if you are a power user needing a CPU cooler than can handle an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 overclocked to 3.0GHz, this cooler isn’t for you.  If you have any other CPU that spits out less wattage than the Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz, the CoolJag Falcon Cu 92 might be for you and may very well perform well.  But the benchmark has been set, if a cooler can cool down a Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz then it’s a damn good one, the CoolJag Falcon Cu 92 does not, its limits have been reached.

Pros and Cons

• + Top notch construction
• + Good performance for stock applications
• + Relatively easy to install
• + Quiet fan
• - Not for the power user with a Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz
• - Poor placement of sensor
• - If the fan dies, how are you going to replace it?
• - May pose problems due to wide footprint

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