Design and Functionality
The Thermalright SI-128 is shipped without a fan. The cooler’s heatsink looks like this:
The cooler has four copper nickel-plated pipes, 8mm in diameter, which go out of the cooler’s copper base and carry a large number of thin aluminum plates:
The plates are placed at a distance of less than 1.5mm from each other. This means that increasing the fan speed should have a positive effect on the cooler’s performance. I’ll check this out shortly.
The heatsink is small as today’s coolers go measuring 125x145x91.5mm at 510g of weight. Two wire supports go out of the base opposite the heat pipes to add rigidity to the whole arrangement.
The cooler’s base is finished well:
As you can see, there is no mirror shine here, but the base is perfectly flat.
To enlarge the contact area, the heat pipes lie in grooves made in the base.
I could find no trace of solder or glue, so it’s hard to tell how the contact between the pipes and the base is established. The pipes are covered with an aluminum plate from above, which also serves as a support for the cooler’s fastening mechanism.
You should glue the rubber strips to the heatsink prior to installing the fan ?they will reduce vibrations.
The fan is fastened with two wire brackets you insert into the butt-ends of the heatsink.
This is simple and handy, but not quite reliable. The brackets tend to slip off the heatsink. Now that the fan is attached, the Thermalright SI-128 looks whole and imposing:
