There are very few coolers that have been able to surpass the Alpha design for cooling CPUs. When you look at the Alpha, thoughts over overclocking race through your mind. 3DfxCOOL provided us with their Alpha Socket 370 heatsink and fan cooler to test out on my system. The CPU in my system consists of the new highly overclockable Socket 370 Celeron 366.

I bought this CPU because it was guaranteed to be overclocked to 550MHz, but the voltage that was recommended was 2.2 volts. I was eager to put the Alpha on it to see if the voltage can be decreased or if the clock rate could be increased. I was surprised to see that I could do both. The Alpha performed efficiently and flawlessly.

Initial Impressions

What else can I say about this? When you first look at the cooler you will be immediately impressed. The cooler is massive and the design is unique. The size of the cooler is 60mm by 60mm. Most people who own an Alpha will agree with that.

You will be hard pressed to find another cooler matching the Alphas efficiency size for size. The aluminum design is accurately cut and the “fingers” that come out of the base of the heatsink are to the right proportion so that the fan can work to its maximum efficiency to cool each and every one of them.

The fan is also impressive. It is much larger than most other fans that are used for cooling the heatsink structure. Although I did find the fan a bit noisy, you can’t argue with the cooling results.

Installation

Some have forgotten to place the spacers on the heatsink before putting the screws on and some have placed the metal wiring that holds the heatsink on upside down. I made sure I did everything by what 3DfxCOOL recommended, even placing the fan so that it blows onto the heatsink instead of forcing the air away from the unit.

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