A Closer Look
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Get past the sheer scale of the thing and the HE02 has a few interesting elements. For starters, it's an asymmetric design, which gives the cooler an unusual appearance. SilverStone's decision to put the contact plate off-centre does make sense; however, it also enables the HE02 to fit into a wider range of chassis, and by rotating it you're almost certain to find an orientation that doesn't provide any motherboard restrictions.
Maximum cooling potential without the need for fans is the HE02's primary objective, and to that end SilverStone has used 30 large and well-spaced aluminium fins that provide plenty of surface area to help dissipate heat away from the CPU.
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SilverStone's copper base isn't made to sparkle - you can still see the machining marks - but the half-a-dozen, 6mm-thick heatpipes are well finished and positioned at interesting angles. With the base plate being off-centre, three of the heatpipes sit at a more extreme angle to reach further into the heatsink.
The strangeness of the design makes us eager to see how it performs, and though it has the makings of a competent passive solution, the HE02's capabilities with fans attached remain a question mark. The cooler's H-shape design is such that any attached fans will sit far from the centre.
Another downside to the HE02 is that its huge size makes installation particularly challenging. SilverStone's mounting kit uses a clamping bridge that passes over the base of the heatsink to attach to the backplate, and while fixing the backplate and mount onto the motherboard is easy enough, holding the clamp in place while securing the cooler is a real pain, and it isn't helped by the HE02's sharp aluminium corners. A good amount of patience is required and if you don't take your time you'll end up with a couple of injuries - we've got the cuts and scrapes to prove it.
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The HE02 looks formidable alright. We've installed it in two unique orientations; horizontally in a passive configuration, and vertically with two 140mm Phanteks PH-F140 fans. The Phanteks fans, despite being 140mm in size, use a 120mm mounting mechanism and attach easily using SilverStone's bundled fan clips.
But again, the scale of the cooler does pose problems. The tall heatspreaders on our G.Skill memory had to be removed for the cooler to fit in either orientation. In the vertical configuration - with two fans attached - the HE02 touches the top exhaust in our Corsair 600T chassis: there's just enough room.
Performance benchmarks are coming up, but before we get to that we'll rate the Heligon HE02 on presentation, installation and aesthetics. In keeping with our recent CPU cooler reviews, each category is scored out of five and we provide an overall percentage, too.
Presentation |
Installation |
Aesthetics |
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SilverStone's packaging is basic, aesthetically the cooler's an asymmetric chunk of aluminium, and it can be a bugger to install. Our first impressions are distinctly average, but let's find out if the HE02 can keep our Core i7-3770K test platform adequately cool by testing it with and without fans.
