The Samuel 17 – a solid block of aluminum that’s great for small form factor setup.
It comes with 6-high quality-heatpipe arranged in down-draft standing only 45mm tall
The only plastic in the package are the washers and thermal paste tube.
Prolimatech provided screws for the fan, and the screws work for both regular 120m fans and low profile fans like the Ultra Sleek Vortext 12.
As always with low-profile heatsinks (and even those super large ones), the RAM height is limited and in many cases, the RAM can only be removed after dismounting the heatsink. Installation process was straight forward, you could even get it done without referring to the manual.
Test Setup / Benchmarks
I used the Intel Core i5-4670K and an Asrock Extreme4 Z87 board. The processor was overclocked, details in the CPU-Z below.
Temperature was monitored using HW Monitor. Room temperature is around 25°C. CPU load was done by converting 10bit MKV video to 8bit using x264, set to -veryslow mode.
I used the Cooler Master JetFlo 120 for this purpose instead of the Prolimatech Ultra Sleek Vortex 12 as the the Vortex 12 is limited to only 56 CFM (that’s the amount of air that flows through per minute) while the JetFlo goes up to nearly 100 CFM on full speed.
I also tested with the JetFlo set to low RPM mode, which I think should be similar or lower than the ltra Sleek Vortex 12.
| Idle (°C) | Load (°C) | |
| Samuel 17 (Full RPM) | 29 | 64 |
| Samuel 17 (Low RPM) | 31 | 67 |
| Stock | 40 | 87 |
Suffice to say, the heatsink works great! How well it performs depends on what fan you put on it.
The Verdict
The Samuel 17 is priced at around 45 USD. In the Malaysian market, it retails at about RM 160 (Here’s a seller!)
The system does the job very well, being not only low profile but cools an overclocked processor admirably. You could possibly run fanless but the 2 protruding fan mount doesn’t look quite unsightly.
