CoolJag 103C

The company, CoolJag, started providing their products during the late 1990s at affordable prices. Their products are supposed to outperform the stock AMD heatsinks, but it comes at the price of some raised noise levels. One of the features CoolJag likes to mention with their products is the Skiving fin technology. This Skiving process produces high surface area, for optimal heat dissipation, while being manufactured at extremely low costs and using a very simple cutting method that leads to a uniform thickness and pitch of the heatsink fins. SelectCool, CoolJag's USA distributor, recently gave us the chance to examine one of CoolJag's AMD Athlon XP heatsinks, the 103C.

Features:

Contents:

The packaging was simple yet nice. The box fit the cooler like a glove, and the fan was also shrink-wrapped. The only other item included besides the fan was a high thermal conductivity compound that we did experiment with during the fan installation.

Examination:

The heatsink was a lot heavier than the stock AMD one, which most everyone has been so accustomed to. After unwrapping the fan, we noticed the cooper had a very nice finish. The construction seemed to allow airflow nicely. It looked very sturdy, but at the same time it made us concerned with the weight overall. The fan was rather generic, and even though it featured two ball bearings, we were not impressed. What did impress us was the socket locking clamps.

When examining the base of the heatsink, we noticed barely any manufacturing flaws, with the surface being rather flat and scratch free.

Performance:

The installation was pretty standard. The hardest part was getting the old fan out of the socket. The locking mechanism on the CoolJag was very easy to insert and remove. The included thermal paste turned out to work very nicely.

As soon as the computer turned back on, we noticed that the noise level had almost doubled. That was somewhat disappointing but we will wait for the temperature readings before making a final judgment.

For our load, we used CPU Burn-in v1.01 and allowed that to run for 30 minutes, followed by letting the system idle for another 30 minutes. SpeedFan 4.20 recorded all CPU temperatures, our ambient temperature was maintained at 22°C.

We were rather impressed with the idle and load temperatures of the CoolJag 103C with its Skiving fins. We were expecting it to perform just as well, if not better, than the AMD stock heatsink. It is a very inexpensive replacement, but not an improvement over the stock heatsink.

Conclusion:

The CoolJag 103C is a very good-looking CPU cooler. It displays good engineering as well as a solid build especially with its Skiving fin technology, which leads to lower manufacturing costs and is passed to the consumer. Although the 103C wouldn't be able to outperform many of the after-market cooling solutions, the CoolJag 103C is no doubt a reliable alternative to the AMD stock heatsink.

Pros:

� Performance
� Solid construction
� Easy install
� Cooper based Skiving fins

Cons:

� Fairly Heavy
� Noisy