Everyone who is into PC performance is familiar with the name Asetek. Asetek is the manufacturer of the infamous Vapochill case, which I had the opportunity to review a couple years back. That sucker will cost you a bundle of money, but will also get you an ass-load of performance. Apparently Asetek realized that not everyone can afford a fully phase changed case, so they went small. Hence, the Vapochill Micro.

The Vapochill Micro is a heatsink using heatpipe technology. Asetek calls it a mini phase change unit, but all heatpipes are phase change. In my mind, in order to call a product phase change, it had better have a condenser attached. The Vapochill Micro doesn't include a condenser, but it also doesn't cost $800 bucks.

I've had my foray's into the world of CPU cooling via heatpipe before, but have never received the results that I could get with a Zalman on air. Most recently, I had a Thermalright XP-120 that truly sucked. I threw a high performing Sunon on the heatsink to see if that would help, I ended up with an extremely loud heatsink that still performed like crap. So even though I respect what Asetek has done with their VapoChill phase change units, I didn't have very high expectations as to how their heatpipe heatsink would work.

Package in Detail

The Asetek Micro comes in three different flavors; you have the model labeled "Extreme Performance", another labeled "High End", and the one that you see in the package, the "Ultra Low Noise". All three models are exactly the same except for the fan that comes with the heatsink. Extreme Performance has the highest CFM, Ultra Low Noise the lowest. The Asetek Micro is packaged in a hanging clamshell that contains a lot more than it initially seems.

When you break the package down you will find the heatsink and rad as a single unit, the fan, a PCI slot fan speed controller, some power cables, and some well written instructions printed on the back of some light cardboard.

Included are the power cables; these connect to your 12V rail and the PCI controller to allow fan speed control and RPM monitoring. The PCI controller is adorned very well in Blue and includes a rather large fan speed knob. The large knob makes it much easier to access when doing a case reach-behind. The heatsink requires two connections to the PCI cover, one to control voltage and the other provides the juice. As you can see in the last pic, the board has been revised at least once. In my testing, it worked flawlessly. With the Ultra Low Noise fan installed, there really is no need for the controller since the fan is almost silent at top RPM.

The bracket that is included holds the base of the heatsink against the CPU and screws directly into the CPU bracket.

Asetek includes a well designed clear plastic shroud with this heatsink, it allows the fan to sit off of the fins by 1/2 inch at the top and about 1 inch at the bottom. By having the fan sit away from the fins, and angling it so it doesn't blow directly through, Asetek has removed the dead spot that occurs at the center of the fan. It also applies air more directly against the fins to assist with heat removal. The fan is held in place with 4 plastic rivets. The plastic the shroud is made out of is very thin and light which I don't care for, but by making it so thin it is a breeze to bend in order to install and uninstall it.

This is how the shroud fits on the heatsink. Notice that it holds the fan closer at the top than at the bottom. It is simple to install and remove, merely bend the bottom apart and and it slips right on or off. The shroud is designed to fit only 92mm fans and Asetek hasn't announced plans to release any other design. Let's hope that Asetek decides to come up with a 120mm design sometime in the near future.