If there were a Pro Bowl for the PC heatsink market, the folks at Swiftech would likely be considered the yearly favorite to win. Since the introduction of their MC2 “sandwich” cooler in 1998, they’ve gone on to introduce an array of award-winning products catered to the enthusiast market and have never looked back since.

For a lot of folks, their first introduction to the Swiftech name may have come by way of the now seemingly ancient MC462. When it was released, Tim Allen’s around the world could be heard grunting in unison; all in awe of the massive cooler that had been bestowed upon them. As inspiring of a product as it was, it would come to be replaced by a newer model, the MCX462. Sporting the same 1/2” copper base, the biggest noticeable change came in cooling pins. Not only were there more of them, 371 compared to 261, but they now had a “helicoids” design where grooves were actually carved into them, giving them a 50% increase in surface area for greater heat dissipation.

One lingering issue up to this point was that the use of a massive flow capable fan, such as the Vantec Tornado, was needed to get any decent cooling. This was mostly due to the sheer number of pins attached to the base; while they had more surface area, they were also tight enough to hinder airflow from slower spinning fans. While the true hardcore folks didn’t mind the ear numbing 56 decibels generated by fans of this caliber, those looking for great cooling without the noise typically found themselves looking elsewhere.

So how do you go about redesigning a great performing product so that results are above the competition even in lower air flowing environments? Logic says you just remove some of the 371 pins to allow for less restriction on the air flow. You can pretty much guess the answer to that was a resounding “no” from Swiftech as that would directly impact the cooling capacity of the product. So what other magic can one pull from up their sleeves to solve the riddle?

Enter the engineers. Their answer? The Swiftech MCX462-V. Looking something like a fireworks explosion or ground zero of tin can versus M80 firecracker, the new cooler definitely sports an interesting pin layout style. Gone are the days of perpendicularly mounted fins. Now we’re greeted with pins that bend out and away from the center of the heatsink in concentric circles. Imagine the rings you observe in water after dropping a rock in and you’ll notice an odd similarity with the pin layout. Something even more interesting is the fact that the pin count is now even higher on the V revision, coming in at 390! This new layout definitely opens up a lot of new area for air to flow without restriction, but its increased cooling ability is only theory until we introduce it to the real world. Swiftech claims that this new model “surpasses all previous high-performance Swiftech products by an order of magnitude (up to 6°C better at extremely low air flow rates).” I say it’s about time we get this thing out of the box and see what it’s capable of doing under the hood.