Page 4 - Conclusion
The SAMA A60E in its current state may not be a top player in the market, but it has potential. During my testing, it performed well in cooling my midrange AMD CPU for both the idle and load tests. The noise produced was nearly silent when fan speeds were low. The contact plate utilizes a pure copper base with nickel plating, which enhances corrosion protection. The visual design is appealing, especially the stunning heatsink cover plate. As for the installation, the instructions are easy to follow with a very straightforward process. SAMA also included a tube of their Freeze thermal paste, which can be used for multiple installations. However, there are a few areas to improve upon for the SAMA A60E. The first would be to improve quality control, since I found two tiny dents on the contact plate, and one of the heatsink top covers was loose. Next, the fan side walls are very prone to scratch marks with no easy way to clean them. At high speeds, the fans also produce a distracting high-pitched noise in addition to the already somewhat high noise level. Lastly, the last five fins on each heatsink tower are shorter than the rest with no obvious added benefit, so it would likely be beneficial to extend them. One more improvement, unrelated to the product, is the fan noise level specification listed on SAMA's website is misleading. They wrote the noise level of the fan to be 29dBA without indicating that it is the idle volume. I currently cannot find any listings for the SAMA A60E at press time, but the target MSRP is $60. The price is reasonable, but there is some solid competition in this price range for dual tower CPU coolers. Overall, the SAMA A60E is a visually appealing CPU air cooler with excellent performance, but it would also benefit from the list of improvements I discussed in this review.
SAMA provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH Networks Review Focus Summary:
7/10 means Great product with many advantages and certain insignificant drawbacks, but should be considered before purchasing.
6/10 means A product with its advantages, but drawbacks should not be ignored before purchasing.
-- Final APH Networks Numeric Rating is 6.6/10
Please note that the APH Networks Numeric Rating system is based off our proprietary guidelines in the Review Focus, and should not be compared to other publications.
The SAMA A60E is a high-performing and visually appealing CPU air cooler with key areas for improvement.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Installation and Test Results
4. Conclusion
