3DfxCOOL
Socket
370 Alpha 7HO-FAN review
Posted
by Adam
Klein on September 16, 1999 - Page 2/3
Company:
3DfxCOOL
Product: Socket 7-370 Alpha 7HO-FAN
Installation
(continued)
The
Alpha design states that the fan should be facing away from
the heatsink, but 3DfxCOOL recommends the unit to be blowing
onto the heatsink. I agree with 3DfxCool’s method. I
currently have my CPU in an MSI v1.1 converter board placed
in an Abit BX6 r2 motherboard. The heatsink is placed on its
side rather than directly towards the motherboard because of
the slocket converter, so I can see why blowing towards the
heatsink would be more beneficial.
The MPU 3.7
heatsink compound is really heavy-duty stuff and is bundled
with the 3DfxCOOL Alpha 7-370 unit. This thermal compound
has been ranked the highest quality around.
Previously,
I have been using the cheaper Radio Shack stuff. The
compound that is shipped with the 3DfxCOOL Alpha is much
much much more thicker than the cheaper Radio Shack stuff
and performs much better too. The fan that comes with the
unit is a 60mm by 25mm unit capable of 27.2 cfm. The fan is
also a ball bearing unit, which means it is a little bit
noisy, but will last a long time.
Overclocking
Results
When
it comes to overclocking, a lot of people uses the Alpha and
for good reasons too. My results were impressive to me. The
place where I ordered my guaranteed overclocked Celeron 366
CPU to 550MHz recommended 2.2 volts for stable operation at
the 550MHz overclocked speed.
The
place obviously didn’t do any “burning in” of the CPU,
because after 6 hours of looping unreal I was able to run
the CPU 100% stable at 2.1 volts. This was with the smaller
generic cooler that was supplied with the CPU. After putting
the Alpha on this very same CPU, I was able to enable turbo
mode (103MHz FSB) to run the CPU at 567MHz and I lowered the
voltage to the default 2.0 volts. I then ran the Unreal
flyby loop at this speed for 8 hours straight without one
single lockup. I was impressed to say the least. I then
tried for 616MHz.
While
the CPU was unstable, I was able to boot into Windows 98 at
2.3 volts. The previous cooler would stop at the splash
screen. I’m not one to keep trying for these super high
overclocking speeds, so I am comfortable with running the
CPU at 567. Besides, why worry about if the CPU is going to
lock up and if you can get the highest number of frags in
Quake 2 when you can just be worrying the later?
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