Recently, we featured the Dynatron W23 in our ASRock Rack AMPONED8-2T BCM Motherboard Review. There are fewer heatsink options for the AmpereOne than we saw with the Ampere Altra Max. With the Altra Max there were Noctua NH-D9 AMP-4926 4U and NH-U14S AMP-4926 units, but for AmpereOne, we needed an active cooler, and that is when we found the W23.
Dynatron W23 Overview
The 3U heatsink comes with an attached fan held in place with two screws. It is also narrow enough to fit within the mounting points of the AmpereOne socket, so it is easy to mount on server motherboards without interfering with memory.
Here is a quick look at the bottom of the heatsink. You can see the copper contact point where the heat pipes attach to.
The other one that you will quickly notice is that there are five contact points for thermal interface material. The center one directly touches the CPU core die, while the others contact the heatspreader that cools the PCIe controllers and memory controllers.
If you want a good idea of what the LGA5964 socket looks like with an AmpereOne A192-32X, here is the socket and CPU.
You will notice that the direct contact die cooling means that the center of the heatsink’s contact area protrudes to make contact. It also makes it difficult to take a photograph of the heatsink without altering the pre-applied thermal paste.
Once the four mounting screws are installed and the fan assembly is attached, there is a single 4-pin PWM fan header connection to the motherboard.
The airflow direction is the same as most server motherboards will be from front to back.
Let us quickly get this installed to see how it performs.
