Thermaltake ITBU CL-P0303
While Thermaltake does not provide any documentation with the ITBU CL-P0303 its installation is very simple. With the Intel Xeon Dempsey installed, simply ensure that the Dow Corning TC-5022 compound comes in proper contact with the CPU followed by tightening the spring-loaded screws to the respective CPU socket holes. Finally, connect the fan cable to the 4-pin CPU motherboard connection. We had easily mounted two Thermaltake ITBU CL-P0303 coolers on the Tyan Tempest i5000XL motherboard and had not run into any problems. The system was using a pre-production version of the Tyan Tempest i5000XL, 4 x DDR2 FB-DIMM modules, and we had tried out these heatsinks with Intel Xeon 3.20GHz and Intel Xeon 5080 3.73GHz CPUs. Even with the Intel Xeon 5080 CPU, which is the fastest Dempsey available, there were no problems with its cooling performance.
When it came to the performance, when booting up the Tyan Tempest solution with the CL-P0303 coolers, they were incredibly quiet. Beyond the noise of the graphics card cooler, hard drives, and other devices, there was not much noise that could be attributed to these Thermaltake heatsinks. Even while under full load, these heatsink fans were remarkably quiet. This testing system was running Fedora Core 6 Test 1 and LM_Sensors v2.10.0. LM_Sensors detected the w83627ehf-isa-0c00 module, and the various fan speeds and temperatures were reported, however, not all of them were correct. Due to the Linux hardware sensors not reporting all of the correct data, we do not have our usual official results to share. However, even when using an Intel Xeon 5080, the Thermaltake ITBU CL-P0303 heatsink was able to cope with the heat and we had not run into any problems. We had allowed the system to idle followed by running multiple instances of CPU Burn-In v1.00. The idle temperature for the 3.73GHz processor was approximately 40°C, while under full load it had spiked up to only about 47°C. Overall it was a great Dempsey heatsink and we had no problems with either heatsink.
Over the years we have been impressed by Thermaltake's abilities in the PC enthusiast and gaming arena, however, after trying out the ITBU CL-P0303 heatsink we now know that they also have the skills when it comes to designing impressive active server solutions. The CL-P0303 heatsink boasts an all-copper base and fins, as well as benefiting from dual heatpipes while topping off the cooler with a near-silent 70mm fan. We had no problems with either of the CL-P0303 heatsinks we had tried, and everything from the installation on the Tyan Tempest i5000XL to the performance under full load was all pleasurable. While we did not have our traditional heatsink thermal results to deliver (due to inconsistencies with LM_Sensors) the ITBU CL-P0303 was able to easily cope with the 3.73GHz Xeon 5080, which leads us to believe that there should be no problems with any other Dempsey-based processor on the market. Thermaltake has yet to state whether there is official compatibility with the recently launched Woodcrest Xeon parts, however, it should be seeing as the Xeon 5080 has a TDP of 130W where as the fastest Woodcrest at this time (Xeon 5160) has a TDP of 80W. The Thermaltake ITBU CL-P0303 certainly is a terrific LGA-771 cooler and is certainly worth checking out for the next server or workstation upgrade.
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