Starting our roundup today is what seems to be the runt of the family. Targeted squarely at users looking for good performance and minimal noise from a reasonably sized and priced cooler, the RX-K8 is by far the simplest. Packed snugly in a vacuum seal plastic unit, this modern Iteration of the Silent boost features an "Open Frame" 92MM fan. This fan, calling on design ideals already well implemented by other companies such as Arctic Cooling and Intel (for their reference units), is intended to help cut down on wind noise caused by air turbulence inside the fan's frame. Unfortunately, this 6 Watt fan has one aggravating issue - one which refused to disappear with the case side shut. No matter what we did, the fan's motor growled in a manner similar to the "Silent Cat" fans of yore. At this point, you've got to ask yourself - do you prefer a growl or a whoosh with your computing landscape? On the plus side though, both of these fans are easily quieter than the reference solutions AMD provides, which makes things a little less straining when you've got work to do in the quiet of the day.
This fan then blasts its air down on to a core of thin copper fins with no heat pipes in sight. As to the fins themselves, they are engineered to stay in place rather well, with folded sides soldered together, before they are soldered to the heat sink's base itself. Unfortunately, it will be this dated design that hobbles the heatsink - after all, how many performance heatsinks of the modern day don't feature heat pipes. The whole purpose and necessity behind heat pipes is that they facilitate the transfer of heat so much faster than raw copper - meaning that if three heat pipes were added to this sink, and the dissipation area was reduced to 25MM in height, performance would probably be equal.
Turning the heatsink to its base, we can see a rather flat surface rife with machining marks. While some users may whine about the negative effect incurred by this sort of finish, their argument can be cast aside by the purpose of thermal grease - to fill said gaps and facilitate the proper transfer of heat between processor and heatsink. As to the thermal grease included with this unit, it's Thermaltake's usual bag of cake frosting, which needs to be shaken/mashed up a bit before anything happens, in order to re-affiliate the components which have separated. To those of you now looking at the seemingly lacking contents of the box in wonder, or potentially disgust, there really are only three items in the box. These three items are a very well done manual in perfect English with colour photos detailing how to install the sink, your generic thermal paste, and the silent boost itself. Users on the Athlon 64 platform won't need anything else to install but the Lotes bracket, while users of the Intel Socket 775 Platform need not apply. With simple clip and go installation, a relatively quiet fan and (by modern standards) compact construction, what's not to love? Perhaps the performance, but that's another matter. Now, without any further adieu, let's head on to the middle child of this hotheaded family.
