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A Closer Look
  
The packaging for the Aero7 is very nice indeed, showing you the HSF from 3 sides as well as all the pertinent information on the front and back. Opening the packaging is a much easier task than the usual packaging with just a few clips at the bottom of the package to allow you to slide the contents out (I felt like I was opening an Easter Egg box & ). Inside this the HSF and its extras are protected within its own clear plastic pack. The extras include some white thermal paste, a PCI slot cover, a 3 ½ inch bay cover, some screws and the instructions.
When I was first asked if I wanted to take a look at this, I was intrigued by the design of the fan, but also a bit wary of the whole 'look' of it. It seemed a bit ugly to put it bluntly. But after actually seeing it in real life it instantly grew on me and would be something I wouldn't mind showing off in a case window. Your eyes are firstly drawn to the fan assembly which rather than being a standard laying flat affair has the impeller blowing from the sides in a vertical manner. This will have the effect of negating the 'deadzone' in the centre (where the CPU is) as found on traditional axial fans.
  
Removing the fan you can see that there is plenty of room for the air to cover the entire heatsink, and hopefully this will go a long way in cooling your CPU. Making the surround for the fan from clear, frosted plastic gives a nice aesthetic to the fan, with a muted blue showing through from the impeller itself. I would say there is enough room in there to add a couple of blue LED's and make the fan assembly glow with a soft light. Might make for a quick and pleasing mod :). The fan attaches to the HSF by way of 4 screws which screw directly into the top of the sink, making for a very secure and easy attachment. As you may have noticed in the specifications, the fan has a potentiometer attached, much like the fan from the X-Dream, to allow you to control the fan speed (and noise generated) giving you a best of both worlds solution in regards to noise and performance.
 
This is where either the PCI slot plate or the 3 ½ inch bay cover come into the picture. The dial for the potentiometer can be attached to the PCI slot plate and subsequently to a spare PCI slot on your case, making for easy Dial-in control of the fan speed. Once again, like the X-Dream fan, the leads on the dial are plenty long enough to reach to the front of your case as well, and this time round, have seen fit to supply you with a 3 ½ inch bay cover (complete with screws) just for this purpose, giving you the end user the choice. The PCI faceplate has the logo imprinted onto it and the brushed aluminium bay cover has the logo printed to one side of the mirror silver plastic dial. The only bad aspect I can say about the fan assembly is that due to its radial design it makes the entire HSF over an inch taller than your average HSF, and this will need to be taken into account before buying.
 
The heatsink itself is of the skived copper variety and whilst weighty, it isn't heavy enough to worry me about attaching the unit to my ZIF Socket. The clip uses the trademark push design, in that with just one thumb you can attach the 'sink to the 6 lugs on your ZIF Socket. I like this idea a lot, as I've never been a big fan of using a screwdriver which could easily slip and put a hole through your motherboard.
 
As I said, the 'sink is of the Skived variety which means that rather than attaching the fins to the base, the fins and base are one, with the fins being sort of shaved out from one block of copper. This is another idea that in theory should help increase thermal conduction between the base and the fins, since they are all one piece.
  
One side of the heatsink is imprinted with the logo, a sort of 'watermark' if you will. Moving to the bottom, we find a big red label protecting the finish of the base. Whilst it may seem obvious to most, the label does warn you to remove it before putting the HSF onto your CPU. Removing the label we find that whilst the base has a few machine marks and is not to a mirror finish it does seem very clean and very flat to the naked fingertip. It might be worth the hardcore among you lapping it a little, and this probably wouldn't take much effort to bring it to a mirror finish. For the rest of the world, the finish is more than adequate for the job in hand.
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Cooler Master Aero 7 Socket-A: Cooler Master kicks out a new AMD cooler, which uses a different kind of fan than most people are accustomed to. The performance of the package was quite surprising.
