I'll have one in about a month.
why so long? I think they are already shipping them in several shops (here in US).
It takes me a while to get everything unfortunately. The good news is they send two of everything in case something is defective.
I'm still on the fence about buying one. I'd like to go back to watercooling, but I'd need a new case to do a good 120x3 internal radiator setup.
$70 for the heatsink, or $60-70 for a new waterblock and $200 for a new case, hmm...
sounds like yours are samples for a review. do they let you keep one or both afterwards? :]
Not a reviewer but my method of procurement is more difficult due to me being at sea.
At sea but have a mailing address....how's that work?
yes that peaked my interest as well, how do people send you packages? and how do you get internet connection? satellite?
LOL they don't send anything to the ship. I use a broker who procures goods and tests as requested. Everything is purchased in pairs as well in case there is a failure. This is then packaged and waiting for me at the home port.
The company provides internet at a cost of $0.10 per minute about as fast as slow(er) DSL with about 750ms latency. The other connection is provided by a consultant using low earth orbit satellite which is much faster and has around 100ms latency. It's comparable to 1.5Mbps DSL. Best of all it's free for me to use. (so far!) It's not always reliable though and when it goes down it goes DOWN!
that sounds like quite an interesting life, how long are you at sea at a time?
Have they changed more than just the fin design and lapping the bottom from the Rev C? I'm assuming the spacing will remain the same to accommodate lower RPM fans. It'd be nice if they could design it so it wouldn't impede the 6th DIMM slot on most common motherboards too.
That fan is older, yes, that is dust. I'm not using it, that was really just a small test. I've having problems though. Cores #1 and #2 are reading 70 degrees celcius with Real Temp and this is idle. Upon using Prime95 the two cores that are reading high still at or around 70-71 max and then other two cores start increasing in temperature.
It appears that cores #1 and #2 are stuck. They both stay the same no matter what, never change. Also when I Prime the system even at 1.3v, cores #1 and #2 stay at 71c from what it is now and never go above that, ever. However, cores #3 and #4 both vary and go up from what it is at idle to roughly around 45 and 55 respectively. So the other two vary and apparently after finally finding a few sites with similar results, it appears to be the norm. People said the sensors get stuck on quite a number of QX9650. I have another QX9650 but didn't want to tear that down to test it so I'm just going to leave it as is, put it back to stock voltage and leave it at the stablest overclock I can get and call it a day. I'm just going to move forward towards i7 now.
Even with 70lb of pressure you can move the heat sink around. I tried it and was surprised by that to. I just tested my setup by installing a regular retail Intel heat sink and fan and the problem remains only my temps went up a tad bit. So my CPU seems to have a problem but if the lower two cores say anything, it's a pretty decent cooler. I don't have another super cooler I can test against. I'll be looking to pick up a Promeg within the next month so I'll try and update. I have to fix this CPU thing first, I may have to get another CPU or see if Intel will RMA this one.
The Megahalems would turn if it were not mechanically restrained. Increasing the pressure does not assure it will not turn! As a matter of fact increasing the pressure too much risks damaging the board! Some users have reported "losing" memory when the pressure is cranked up on the VX. I had this happen once with my Megahalems because the backplate was modified to increase pressure. It was temporary to see if there was a change in load temps. (there wasn't) What happened is the system showed 8192MB RAM (out of 12GB) and Win7 indicated 8GB (out of 12 available!).
If you see this happening, back off!
To recap if the mounting does not physically restrain rotation of the heatsink you will always be able to turn it. Sometimes with surprisingly small effort. Don't worry about that - your temps will be fine.
The retention mechanism on the TRUE Rev. C is much like the Megahalems and indeed rotation is NOT possible. I found the Rev. C to be within killing distance (1-2C typ) of the Megahalems.
I currently use the Megahalems Shadow. Its base is polished whereas the original Megahalems had machine grooves - although very subtle. I would NOT recommend lapping either base as they are intentionally convex to optimize thermal transfer between CPU and heatsink when mounted. I bold that part because you cannot see what it looks like (the light leak test) when it's mounted under pressure.