Introduction :

Heat. The final frontier. In our search for higher clock speeds and better performance we have encountered many new ways to cool down the processor in a computer system. Although some new ways seem to be very effective (water-cooling / phase-change) none offer the plug and play attitude of air-cooling.

AMD introduced Socket A, and the cooler-market became an open ballpark, everybody stepped up the pitch, trying to hit a home-run. It started of with GlobalWin and its FOP38, using a screaming 60mm delta fan to produce impressively low CPU temperatures. Then AMD ramped up the speed of the Thunderbird series, and when it reached 1400 MHz the little chip was churning out 72+Watt. Other manufactures stepped in to provide the best air-cooling solutions at that time, the ALPHA PAL8045 and Swiftech MC462 are 2 efforts which hit home pretty hard and fast. Both offering enough cooling power to run the 1.4 GHz Tbird with a silent 80mm strapped to the heatsink.

Now that AMD is reaching almost 2.2 GHz with their latest Athlon XP CPU's (Barton 3000+), the heat is back on; the XP 3000+ for example gives off ~75Watt.

If you run your system on stock/default speeds, then that default cooler will suffice if you can stand the noise. But if you like your system quiet and good performing, you might want to change that cooler sitting on top of your CPU.

Today we will be looking at some of the top notch Socket A heatsinks out there:

- Swiftech MCX462-V (Flower design of the MCX4000)
- Thermalright SLK947-U (Improved SLK900)
- Thermalright SP-97 (Heat pipes like the SP-94 for Intel)
- Scythe Kamakaze (Alpha PAL8045 look-a-like)
- Alpha PAL8045 (Top performer in 2001)
- Evercool CUF-715CA (silent copper heatsink)
- Evercool MAG-01 (Fits Socket 462/478 and A64!)
- Stock AMD cooler (that comes with an Athlon XP 2200+)

Let's find out how to install each ->