“Innovation is the creation of the new or the re-arranging of the old in a new way.” -Michael Vance.

One would think that in this day and age cooling, the method of mating a large, heatsink and fan atop a processor would have long gone the way of the Dodo bird. How is it that, costs aside, newer cooling methods like H2O and Peltier haven’t all but put the last nail in the air cooling coffin? The answer, innovation. Not being satisfied with the status quo, these innovators go back to the drawing board, figuring out better ways of accomplishing the same task; building a better mouse trap if you will.

Enter Thermalright. While they weren’t really known a few years ago, the release of their successful, not to mention gorgeous and high performing, SLK line of copper heatsinks, has lead them to become quite a common household name in the cooling community, ranking right up there with longtime heavyweights like Swiftech. But what can one do to build upon and improve a product line that is already stretching the current known limits of simple surface contact cooling? You add some heat pipes of course!

So what exactly is a heat pipe and how does it work? Simply put, a heat pipe consists of a tube which is filled with a low boiling point liquid. As heat is applied and soaked up by the liquid, it soon evaporates and moves its way upward into the tube. As it moves further up the tube, it begins to dissipate the accumulated heat. As it gives off this heat, it begins to condense back into a fluid and flow back down again to repeat the cycle. Much similar to the way water evaporates, gathers together to form clouds, and then comes back down as rain droplets. Think of it as a miniature mother nature in your computer.

You might remember we’ve seen this heat pipe methodology used in products before, like DickNervous’s review of the Cooler Master HHC-001. All things being equal, the HHC-001 only had two, little pipes attached while the SP-94 has three, large 8mm pipes that could pass for turbo intake pipes on your average, high performance automobile. So do these massive heat pipes help Thermalright take air cooling to the next level from their already successful like of SLK heatsinks? Read on as we attempt to find an answer.