05/29/2004

Heatsinks

Well, my heatsink has now justified its cost in my book. I ran my AMD 2100+ CPU, sans fan, for at least 15 minutes, and with no ill effects. It got a little warm, perhaps, but anything that succeeds that far outside its intended use is OK by me. All the complainers, who tout Pentium 4's ability to underclock itself, can eat their words. Pay 2/3 or 3/4 for the same performance (AMD v Intel), and you can afford quite a spectacular heatsink/fan, even at retail prices, which will allow any CPU to survive even in what would normally be considered a hostile environment. If you were curious, my heatsink is a Thermaltake Volcano 9+. The entire Volcano line is reasonably priced, so I would highly recommend you check it out. The Extreme Volcano 12 is my current favorite, and you can be sure it'll do the job well. Find Thermaltake's site here, or an excellent review here.

Eventually, I'll get around to doing a real AMD v. Intel piece, but right now I am rather busy. Apologies to anyone who noticed - this was supposed to be posted yesterday, but it didn't happen.


the_doc