I have some pictures of the SP-97 out of the case, now.
On thing I forgot to mention about the SP-97. I believe the unit would have performed better if it had been in a horizontal orientation. Unfortunately, my rig is not very, uh, willing to be turned on its side so that I could test it that way.
The reason I say this is because if you look at the first pic below, you will see that two of the three heat pipes are angled, and one is completely horizontal when the unit is mounted in a vertical orientation. This pipe is not going to be able to transfer a lot of heat, since there isn't a significant convection area. One heat pipe will be able to work fairly well (the one on top), but the bottom heat pipe will not be able to work at all, and in the extreme case, would actually transfer heat from the fins to the base (the exact reverse of the way it should work)!
you can see what I was talking about on the base finish in the second pic.
I have marked the third pic with red arrows to show where the
HSF fins are in relation to the fan. You can see that roughly 1/3 of the total fan area is wasted on the
HSF, although it might have other benefits (such as circulating more air around the
VCore regulator.