I've noticed a small change to Intel's half-height heatsinks. Can you spot the difference?

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I'm throwing the question out there to the Forums readers who've bought recent Intel boxed Penryn and Wolfdale CPUs: Anyone get one of these new coolers with their boxed CPU? Has anyone tried it out? The 1st pic is a shot of the cooler that came with an engineering sample e8500. I noticed this same style of cooler in a review of a retail boxed Celeron e1200. Notice how there is no polished bottom, and no chromed spring-like apparatus securing the push pins. The push pins are now part of the fan housing.

ya the copper ones are alot better
but if do not oc these work

I installed the new version of the 775 HSF on an old Pentium 4 3.0 GHz 915/775. The chip was not particularily hot by nature, but no problem so far. The kid has not brought it back.

Lol, who uses those? They're one third the size of stock coolers that comes with old P4. No one in their right mind would slap those on their new expensive cpu. Feel the burn...

Well, I want to protect my investment with a great performing fan, but the new 45nm processors do run a lot cooler than previous releases. I see where some guys are using the larger heatsink like the 120 and NO fan!

I got an 'old' style with a copper base with my E6400, it was naff for anything other than stock speeds. Strange thing is an E6400 has a TDP of 65W just like an E8500 and an E1200.

errm...ya...I don't think you spotted the difference...both of these coolers pictured are half-height, both aluminum cored. Of course the copper cored coolers work better than the aluminum versions, but I'm comparing the current, lowest-of-the-lowend intel box cooler to this even cheaper looking unit (i just changed the old cooler pic, to hopefully make it more clear). Just when you thought the box coolers couldn't get any cheaper, Intel found a way to cut another corner.

Well, Intel puts them in with the e8500 cpu. Apparently they think it can handle the heat at stock speeds.

Intel puts them in the Q9450!

You know with the 45nm units if you have superb case air flow along with a close up strong exhaust fan that is near a large heatsink like the TR 120 (or even the smaller version), and you are not overclocking, you can run without a fan. I guess you realize this. But hey yeah, what an El cheapo HSF to provide with such great CPU's.

Meh, I always stick an after market HSF on my CPU.

THe newer, smaller stock units sound like a toy. You know a wooden airplane with a rubber band driven propeller? Like that when they first start up.

the stock intel cooler with a copper core is great for 3.4ghz dual core systems - i used them all the time with out issues
http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/ [...] C_0095.jpg

i agree that a better cooler may extend the life of the cpu 5% or so

Not sure why you think the new coolers perform worse. As long as there aren't any more problems with good even pressure over the middle for good contact with the heat spreader, I would think that the new coolers are better. Since the idea is to maximize heat transfer from the CPU to the cooler's fins, one less additional plate between the CPU and fins eliminates one interface where heat conduction might not be optimal. My guess is that the chrome-plated metal plate in the old cooler also doesn't conduct heat quite as well as the aluminum of the current one.

At stock they perform well. My E4600 came with the 1st cooler, but I was skeptic. It keeps my processor at 23-24C typing this on FireFox (BTW pledge for Firefox 3, details here, they trying to set a Guinness World Record) http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ And on Prime95 torture test for max heat I maxes out at 45C. But once I overclock it to 3.0GHZ by raising the FSB to 250 from 200, temps skyrocket to 65C+ load. To conclude, these intel stock coolers are good for stock speeds and nothing else. If you OC then you need a 3rd party HSF. I cant wait to get a ACF7P to overclock using auto settings, I dont want to waste time trying to find the lowest stable voltage on my cpu to bring heat down on this crippled HSF.

oh, i use AS5 if that matters.

The reason I