Overclockers Tech

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Introduction

The Baram by little known Thermolab first graced the scene last year and scooped up a flurry of awards. In fact this reviewer saw a comparative review with the Baram leading the pack ahead of the usual top performance heatsinks including the TRUE, IFX-14, and Vendetta 2. Nothing much really became of the cooler though and was rather over-shadowed by the more well known brands and availability of their stock. Thermolab have been busy though. Today we are taking a look at the Baram 2010 – an update over its older brother!

Specifications

Size (HxWxD): 160 x 132 x 67 mm

Weight: 710g without fan

Material: Pure Copper and Pure Aluminium

Fan Size: Two 120 x 120 x 25mm

Socket: Intel LGA775, LGA1156, LGA1366 | AMD AM2, AM2+, AM3

The Cooler

On the box, Thermolab clearly state that the Baram 2010 is, “Designed Best Performance At Dual Fan”, Chinglish translated – Push-Pull Configuration of two fans. We won’t be using a ‘dual fan’ setup today, however we will be using a 120x38mm deep high performance CFM San Ace H1011 fan to replicate this effect as we don’t have two fans alike.

What you are given is rather basic yet simple; one cooler, one tube of thermal paste, one mulit-socket mounting bracket with instructions, and 4 fan clips. Job done.

The cooler itself is rather unique looking with the placement and style of the aluminium cooling plates. Whether this layout is best for the surface cooling area and added heat desperation using two fans, or just for show and tell, were not sure. Either way, it does look rather distinguished.

The BARAM 2010 is the follow-up model of BARAM. The difference with the BARAM in appearance and this BARAM 2010 are that the colour of the base and base cover have changed to an exposed copper from nickel. The BARAM 2010 also has 64 fins, more than the original BARAM which has 54 fins. The increase in fins will facilitate greater performance with ‘dual-fan’.

There are 5 solid copper heatpipes connecting to an all copper solid base for the ultimate in heat conduction.

The base is very smooth to the touch. More so than on the best we’ve come across; Thermalright’s Venomous X. The base it not only super shiny, but very flat and hardly convex in shape. One thing that does strike us is how small the base is, and even though it carries with it 5 copper exposed heatpipes, can it sufficiently cool on the LGA1366 platform? Read on.

Test Method

All our coolers follow the same rigorous testing conditions. We strapped on a single 120mmx38mm fan in the shape of the San Ace 9G1212H1011, widely considered one of the best fans on the market due to its under-volting ability (lower RPM) and high static pressure – perfect for heatsinks. This fan can produce up to 99CFM at full speed. If a heatsink is supplied with a fan, we shall be testing that stock fan(s) on full RPM.

We now use LinX Build 0.6.1 for our entire load testing of heatsinks as this stresses the CPU more so than other load tests and really puts strain on the heatsinks. Idle testing was taken after a LinX run had finished. We allowed a ‘cooling off period’ of 10 minutes for the idle test. Both minimum and maximum temperatures were taken from Real Temp Build 3.58; an average of the cores was taken. Any energy saving features were disabled in the BIOS. OCZ Freeze was the TIM of choice.

All tests were run a minimum of 3 times (each run was followed by a remounting of the heatsink) and only the best results are represented.

Our test system can hit 4.41GHz stable with 1.45v. However, due to the high voltage, not all heatsinks can cope, so we decided on a ‘safe’ voltage level of 1.35v, and a lower stable clock speed of 4.20GHz for our testing.

Test System

-          Intel Core i7 930 @ 4.20GHz w/ 1.35v

-          Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7

-          6GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer @ 1600Mhz 7-7-7-18

-          80GB Intel X25-M Gen2

-          HIS ATI Radeon HD 5850

-          800W Fractal Design Newton R2

The Results

Analysis

With regards to the idle testing, our Baram is on par with the best air cooler on the market; the Cogage Arrow. Comparing the cooler to the AKASA Nero S which uses four 8mm think direct touch copper exposed heatpipes, the Baram team have done some very nice tweaking on their cooler to get the most out of it and being on par with a dual stack fin heatsink (Arrow).

Looking at the important load testing we can see though that the Arrow pulls away, but not too far. The Baram is only within 7C of it. During our testing, unlike all the coolers we have come across at Overclockers Tech, the exposed copper heatpipes at the top of the heatsink were still cold to the touch which suggests that the aluminium stack of fins are doing their job very well and proves that they weren’t for show after all.

Conclusion

Thermolab’s Baram 2010 has a UK price tag of approximately £35 Inc VAT. Although this would need to include an extra £10 or so as the cooler is not supplied with a fan, or if you want to follow Thermolab’s theory of  having the ‘best performance at dual fan’, you’ll be spending near an extra £20 on two decent high static pressure fans, putting this cooler in the same price region of the Cogage Arrow.

Regardless of price, the Baram 2010 is a very nice and effective heatsink. You are supplied with kits for all current major Intel and AMD platforms which are as simple as pie to mount.  The secure thumb screws and washers, and the included 4 fan clips for dual fans give the end user all they need for easy installation. Performance wise, we are quite pleased with the results as it handles our overclocked and over-volted system very well topping no higher than 74C. At first the Baram 2010 was no higher than 66C during the first few minutes ahead of the Cogage Arrow! However as time went on and the stress testing continued, the cooler couldn’t handle the heat much longer, but still ended up only 7C behind the leading cooler.

Overall, the Baram 2010 is a simple yet very effective heatsink and receives 8/10 with a Silver Award!

Cons

-          No fan(s) supplied out of the box.

Pros

-          Fast and very simple installation.

-          Supports all major platforms out of the box!

-          Can accommodate two fans for push-pull.

Thanks

We would like to thank Park at Thermolab for providing the cooler for testing.