Prolimatech Megahalems: A New Player in the Town

A relative new player in the cooling industry, the Prolimatech’s first entry into the CPU cooling with their Megahalems has proven to be a force to be reckon with.

INTRODUCTION

You probably have never heard of Prolimatech. It is an up and coming manufacturer founded in 2008. The company is based in Taiwan with a team of people who are specialized in designing “aerospace resource-saving technology and advanced heat conducting technology.” Their products include CPU cooler, VGA cooler, RAM cooler, and thermal compound.

Their first CPU cooler called the Megahalems is a tower style cooler aimed at computer enthusiasts like you and me. The name Megahalems rhymes with Intel latest processor’s codename, Nahalem. I am not sure if this was done intentionally or is just coincidence as the cooler is designed to work with LGA 1366 as well as older LGA 775 processors.

With Core i7 being such an easy overclocker, it is really simple to overclock a $266 Core i7 920 to the speed of the $1000 Core i7 975 running at 3.33 GHz. If you pair it with a good cooler, it can achieve some good results of 4.0GHz or higher. So, can the new kids in the block take the other established leaders in the computer cooling industry? Can it be the ideal cooler to take you to that magical clockspeed? Let us find out.

PROLIMATECH MEGAHALEMS

 

Prolimatech packed the heatsink in a thick cardboard box with a handy handle on top for carrying the box around. The box provides the heatsink’s dimension, weight, and supported CPU information. The heatsink is placed inside another padded cardboard box to ensure maximum protection during shipping. Our review unit is actually shipped from Taiwan and there is no damage whatsoever on the outside of the box.

Title of the table	Another title
Heatsink Dimension	(L)130mm X (W)74mmX (H)158.7mm
Heatsink Weight	790 g
Heatpipe	6mm x 6 pcs
Suggest Fan	120mm x 120mm x 25mm
Suggest Fan Speed	800 ~ 1200 rpm
Suggest Noise Level (dBA)	Below 26 dBA
Air Flow	57 CFM
Direction of Heatsink	Faces the rear exhaust system

The Megahalems is a tower designed heatsink. The heatsink is fairly large with 130 mm x 74 mm x 157.8 mm (LxWxH) and weighs 790 grams. It is quite tall and pretty heavy, but is not the heaviest heastink we have encountered.

This is a detailed diagram of the heatsink dimension we took from Prolimatech’s website. It gives the potential buyer a physical measurement of the heatsink. Because of its size, it is good idea to check with your case and your motherboard to make sure there is no obstruction near the heatsink before you make your purchase.

 

 

The construction of the heatsink is very solid. The aluminum fins are straight with very thick material and is very sturdy. We have had heatsinks where the cooling fins are very thin and they are easily bend. Megahalems also stands out in the crowd with how it’s fins are packed. The majority of the tower design heatsinks on the market simply has the heatpipes protruding into a stack of cooling fins. The Megahalems, on the other hand, has each cooling fin locked into the fin below it. Because of such design, the fins are all being held in a rigid scaffold where it is difficult to move the fins around. This makes the fins very tightly packed and the whole heatsink very sturdy. This also makes the fins equally spaced so it can provide the best airflow.

Six heat pipes extend out from both sides of the base to conduct heat away from the base. There are a total of 45 metal cooling fins to dissipate the heat. Prolimatech does not disclose the type of metal that was used for the base so we cannot verify if the base of the heat pipes are made with copper or aluminum.

 

Here is a shot of the base of the heatsink. It is pretty smooth. You can see from the picture next to it that the thermal paste is spread evenly across the base of the heatsink.

Two fans can be mounted onto the Megahalems. However, Promlimatech does not include any fan and the package only includes one pair of the fan clips. The company suggests you pair the heatsink with a 120mm X 120mm X25mm fan at 800~1200rpm with 57CFM airflow. Although you can mount the fan to push the air through the cooling fans or pull the air away from the cooling fins toward the case fan, Prolimatech suggests to place the fan faces the rear-exhaust system fan.

 

Included with the heatsink are the socket LGA 775 and LGA 1366 backplates, mounting screws, fan retention clips, and thermal paste. It is really nice to see a tube of thermal paste is included, it saves some trouble of shopping for a tube. Our review sample also includes Prolimatech’s own PK-1 thermal compund. We did a roundup with this thermal compound against other thermal compounds on the market, so check out its performance.

Features

• Minimal air resistance between fins allowing a better balance between noise and performance in the range of 800-1200RPM
• Heatpipes are lined up in a straight line to prevent air back draft allowing air to easily pass through the heatsink body
• Wide fins with mathematically calculated thickness to maximize best air-to-surface cooling rate
• Uniquely designed, easy-to-install socket 775 and 1366 retention mechanism to increase cooling ability
• Easy to apply, high grade thermal compound, a perfect sidekick to all Prolimatech heatsinks

INSTALLATION

Installing the Megahalems requires removal of the motherboard from the case. Although a few steps are required, it is nonetheless not too difficult and luckily the manual is pretty easy to follow the installation diagrams.

 

 

First, install the backplate for your motherboard by screwing in four double threaded bolts. Then, place two mounting bars over the bolts and tighten the screw nuts. Finally, place the aluminum mounting plate between the heatpipes and align the holes to the mounting bars. Tighten two more screws and it is finished.

 

We did have a small problem with our review sample where the LGA 1366 backplate did not align with our CPU mounting holes. After contacting Prolimatech, they promptly shipped the replacement unit to us via express shipping. The new mounting plate has no issues with our motherboard.

We really like the mounting mechanism of the Megahalems because the mounting bars and mounting plates are made with thick aluminum that can provide a very secure holding of the heatsink. However, I do see a potential problem where users may over-tighten the heatsink. Just be sure that you tighten the CPU mounting bar in alternating fashion so the heatsink is evenly screwed onto the CPU and do not overtighen it once it is secured.

 

 

The heatsink can be installed facing the back or the top of the case. The fan can be mounted in the front or the back of the heatsink or if you prefer, you can mount two 120mm fans. A wide range of installation options should satisfy all users with different motherboard designs.

We did encounter an issue with the heatsink and the memory slot on our Gigabyte X58-UD4P. The heatsink has no clearance issue with the motherboard heatsink around the CPU but once we mounted the fan, the memory in the first DIMM will be blocked. Luckily, the DIMM slot can still be used provided that you install the memory before installing the fan. However, if your memory comes with tall heatspreaders, it would pose a problem with the heatsink. This is not a fault with the Megahalems, but we thought we would mention it. With Core i7 board coming with 6 DIMM slots, the space around the CPU can get fairly crowded.

Also, the heatsink does extend above our Northbridge heatsink. It does not have any issue with our NB heatsink but we thought we would mention this in case your motherboard has a large or taller NB heatsink. Be sure to check out the mechanical drawing for the actual dimension and take some measurements before you go out and buy the heatsink.

TESTING CONFIGURATION

Test Rig
Case Type	None
CPU	Intel Core i7 920
Motherboard	Gigabyte EX58-UD4P (BIOS F8)
RAM	Kingston HyperX KHX12800D3LLK3/6GX
CPU Cooler	Prolimatech Megahalems Cooler Master Hyper N620
Hard Drives	Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB
Optical	Nec DVD-RW ND-3520AW
GPU Tested	EVGA GTX 285 FTW
Testing PSU	SilverStone Decathlon SST-DA1000 (1000W)
Legacy	Floppy
Mouse	Logitech G7
Keyboard	Logitech Media Keyboard Elite

Test Candidates

• Prolimatech Megahalems
• Cooler Master Hyper N620

Since Prolimatech does not include two pairs of fan clips, we can only test the heatsink with a single fan. Bare in mind that the heatsink does not come with any fan, you would have to buy a fan with it. This also means that our results could be dramatically different if we used a different fan unit.

We paired the Megahalems with the SilenX IXP-74-11 fan, a very quiet fan running at ~1300 RPM. The fan is mounted on the front of the heatsink pushing the air through the cooling fins. The test was conducted in an open-air environment without any additional cooling. We tested the Megahalems with our Core i7 920 processor at stock setting and overclocked setting with the processor overclocked to 3.6 GHz (FSB 175×21) at 1.4v vCore and 1.64v DIMM voltage. All other voltages settings are set in auto or default.

The temperature was monitored using Everest v 5.01.1700. The idle temperature was taken with the system booting up to Windows for 15 minutes. The Load temperature was taken with the Prime 64 v259 running at the maximum load for 15 minutes. The highest temperatures were reported.

RESULTS

The result is quite impressive considering that our Megahalems using a single fan running at 1300 RPM while the Cooler Master Hyper N620 has two fans running at 1800 RPM. Even with two fans running at such speed, the Hyper N620 is still not able to cool the CPU as good as the  Megahalems. At stock speed, both heatsinks perform identical to each other but under load, the Megahalems is able to lower the CPU temperature 1 degree Celsius. It just goes to show you how efficient the Megahalems is at dissipating the heat away from the CPU.

The result is even more impressive with our overclocking result as we can see the Megahalems is able to keep the CPU running at 2 degrees lower under idle and 3 degrees lower under load than the Hyper N620.

If you are seeking an absolutely quiet heatsink, we definitely would suggest the Megahalems. Simply pair it with a very efficient fan, and you will get a very good cooling performance with your overclocked system.

CONCLUSION

We were really impressed with the first heatsink from Prolimatech. The Megahalems has all of the goodies that you would find in other big players in the cooling industry. It is very well constructed with good quality material. The cooling performance is simply amazing with our 1300 RPM fan. We love the wide compatibility of its mounting design and the ability to mount two fans.

We do wish Prolimatech would include additional fan clips for those who may wish to mount two fans. Also, we would appreciate it if a fan came with the Megahalems so users could save the trouble of buying a fan. However, these are just minor complaints.

At a retail price of $60, the Megahalems is certainly not cheap. However, its performance warrants its price. We believe that you will not be dissapointed with such cooler in all aspects.

Regardless, if you have heard of Prolimatech in the past, we believe that you will definitely familiarize yourself with the company. If the Megahalems is any indication of what the company’s products are going to be, we can see that Prolimatech will surely be a player in the computer cooling industry. The folks at Thermalright better watch out as there is a new player who wishes to challenge the leader in the industry.

We are using a new addition to our scoring system to provide additional feedback beyond a flat score. Please note that the final score isn’t an aggregate average of the new rating system.

• Performance 9.5
• Value 9
• Quality 10
• Warranty 10
• Features 8
• Innovation 9

Pros:

+  Supports Socket LGA 775 and 1366
+  Very solid construction
+  Very secure mounting mechanism
+  Excellent performance
+  Good overclocking potential
+  Quiet (if it is paired with a good fan)
 

Cons:

–  Does not support AMD CPUs
–  No fan is included
–  Can have issue with certain motherboards
–  Price
–  Only has one pair of fan clips

 

The Prolimatech Megahalems is a force to be reckoned with in the world of CPU coolers. The new kids in the block have made such a big statement that we are excited to see what the company will bring out next. For its exceptional performance in both cooling and noise, we award the Megahelams a score of  9 out of 10 and the Bjorn3D’s coveted Golden Bear Award!