CoolerMaster 0wnz the HSF Market!

Some people will pay anything to be cool....

Just kidding Brett, I've seen some of those setups on overclock sites and they look pretty neat. Make sure you get one of those little mini-vacs too; those dust bunnies can cause heat buildup and are tough to get off heatsink fins.

 

i have that one too but the only complaint i have is that its a bit loud... well, compared to the stock fan i had in the athlon xp 1700+

 

But, I like that hairdryer noise in my computer case... I wanna know that it is working
With AMD, you have ~ 10 seconds to power down the computer after the fan fails till the CPU crashes and BURNS

 

P4s would do the same thing w/o SpeedStep. The new AMD chips have the throttle-down technology.

 

Nobody would advocate running a P4 without a HSF but it's good to know that there won't be a meltdown should the HSF clamp spontaneously break and the HSF fall off the chip.

 

alpha makes an equivalent of their pal8045(socketA hsf) for the p4 (I forget the model #, 89-something) that works pretty well, i favor it myself 'cause it accepts an 80mm fan so you can still keep it relatively cool without your rig sounding like a 747 on takeoff at 10 meters that and the fact that it's thermal resistance is .23C/W whereas that of the fujiyama is .4 (lower is better)
you may just wanna send that thing back to directron man, or at least swap the fan out, the everest has a thermal resistance of .25C/W (with disgustingly loud fan), which while it's still not as good as the 89-whatever, it's considerably better than the fujiyama, and aside from that, it looks a lot better than the alpha's offering

 

Well, just to add a little bit I have an AMD Tbird 1Ghz at home and had a HSF failure, now this was a cheap OEM $12 HSF so it wasn't a huge slab of copper/aluminum like most of the real HSF's are. The case had one exhaust fan on it plus the power supply fan.

Windows became unstable during 3d gaming (was playing Flight Sim 2k when I noticed), but for normal desktop use I probably would have never noticed. Temps went up quite a bit, even past the AMD top level (I think I saw around 100-105c but no more). Since I discovered the problem that evening, I just made a quick duct, turned the case fan around and was back up and running using the case fan with temps in the high 60's (but I didn't try to do anything that would require high CPU usage).

When I replaced the HSF, everything went back to normal (and that was over a year ago) and I actually replaced it with something semi-decent this time so I got some lower temps again.

I didn't have any smoke, no fires, etc. Tom's test of was interesting, but also a little stacked by running those grueling CPU torture tests. I would have liked to see what happens at small CPU usage (figure normal everyday computing) if the actual HSF comes off.

Also when you guys are looking at HSF's, be aware that the ZIF socket has a rating on it for how heavy a HSF you can attach to it (with the clips), and most of those ultra-heavy duty HSF's exceed it by a fairly high margin (like double or more), most of the higher quality HSF's are now board mounted, but a few aren't. Just something to keep in mind when shopping around.

Andrew

 

Andrew-
YIKES! the max temp that any AMD cpu is supposed to be able to tolerate is 90*C, but even then only for a short while, you got reeaaally lucky
and the new alphas (for socketA and 478) are board mounted, they'd rip the socket off the pcb otherwise

 

Brett-

could you point me to these tests? i haven't been able to find a single page (in english anyway, and none of the foreign pages have any numbers i can read) that had test results of any sort for the fujiyama or the everest, only links to their socketA counterparts

i ask because I may be building an intel rig this summer for an HTPC, if the fujiyama and everest are as good as you work them up to be then id certainly use them in place of the 8942 which i currently plan to use

 

Hey everyone,
I'd just like to ask what program I should download for getting a reading of my CPU/mobo temps? I don't like having to restart the computer, and enter the BIOS each time I want to check.
I downloaded one program, called "Motherboad Monitor" (I think) but it didn't work. After loading it up, it wouldn't give me the temps of anything. It just reported everything as 0 degree's.
I've just added a second hard drive, and will be adding a GeForce4 as soon as it arrives to my computer, and I'm a little worried about the case temp. Should I buy a case fan to mount in the front-bottom of my case as an air intake?
Thanks a bunch.
(I would have started a new thread for this, but this one seem somewhat along the same lines... hope everyone doesn't mind? )

 

Andrew-
motherboard monitor needs to know where it's supposed to get it's data from before it can display anything, thermal monitoring hardware is different for every chipset, so it'll vary across motherboards (mbm is the right program to have btw )
and if you don't currently have any air moving through your case, yes, add fans, but be smart about it, the efficiency of your airflow is just as important, if not more important, than having high airflow volume
1) make sure you've got roughly the same amount of air entering and exiting your case, a little bit of positive pressure is good to keep dust out (bit more input than output)
2) make sure you've got your air moving in one general direction (this shouldn't be a problem so long as you use the stock fan mounts for your case, that is, no cutting blowholes)
You can also get card coolers that mount in the case below the video card (assuming you're using a tower-type case): http://www.plycon.com/coolgear.htm
something like that first item there is what I'm talking about, it's not absolutely necessary, but if you can't get temps low enough in your case with regular fans, it's good to have a little extra protection for something as expensive as the gf4 you're buying
Brett-
ahh, ok, that makes a bit more sense then
the thermal resistance for the PAL8045 (Alpha's latest socketA hsf) is .05 C/W higher than the PAL8942 (with the same fan, I'm not quite sure how that works, the heatsinks look identical save for the mounting gear)
regardless, I'm still interested in seeing the review when you find it, if for nothing else than just for better awareness of what's out there, I've been somewhat detached because my priorities have shifted more towards academics the end of the semester