Verdict: Ten months old, and still a great Athlon 64 HSF

We first saw the Evo 33 in May last year, when it was called the AK-913. It hammered the competition to win that month's HSF Labs test. The name change is the only difference between the AK-913 and the Evo 33, and some stores may still list it under its old name.

Instead of having a cluster of small heatpipes, the Evo 33 has a single large heatpipe that sits directly above the CPU heatspreader. Air is then pushed over a collection of aluminium fins by a variable-speed 80mm Akasa Amber fan. A second 80mm fan can be fitted to the other side of the fins to further improve cooling. Despite its reasonably large size, the Evo 33 simply screws into the standard Athlon 64 CPU mounting bracket, so you don't have to muck around pulling your PC apart to install it.

The Evo 33 is ten months old but it's still a great HSF; at minimum fan speed, it cooled the CPU to 13ûC below the reference HSF, and to 17ûC below at full speed. The only real competition for the Evo 33 is the Gigabyte G-Power Cooler Pro and the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro. Frankly, any of these HSFs is worthy of a place in your PC, but the Evo 33 is still just pipped by the Freezer 64 Pro.

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