SEPTEMBER 1999
The Swiftech
MC1000 PPGA Cooler review is now up so check it out. In case you didn't already
know the MC1000 is a TEC (Peltier) based cooling setup that will most likely help you take
your current processor to never before imagined performance levels.
Speaking of Switech's line of MC coolers, Overclocking Extreme also
has a review
up about the even more powerful (but much larger and more power hungry) MC2000 cooler.
Boy do I have some good news, for a limited time PCNut is once again offering Celeron 366
combos pre-tested at 550MHz. These combos consist of the highest grade components
insuring you the greatest performing and most reliable system possible.
I just got word from Agg over at Overclockers Australia that he
has finished his write-up on his water-cooled, peltier-assisted Celeron
366 at 643MHz. The retention mechanism on the water block is very interesting
since I find it similar to the one I have been using on my own water-cooled experiment
recently, I guess great minds do think alike. : )
For those of you familiar with the lack of popularity concerning Maxtor's
HDs in overclocked systems then you need to check out the article at FPS 3D. Seems they have some things to say about
Maxtor's latest ATA/66 drives. I personally have been using a 13.6 gig
DiamondMax Plus ATA/66 drive in one of my systems and I have been impressed.
If your looking for another opinion and test data concerning the
heatsinks I covered in my PPGA Cooler
Shootout article then head on over to www.hardwarelab.de
for some more information in both German and English.
Man am I in a bad mood, I was working on the MC1000 PPGA Cooler
review when my dog decided to drop her toy on my systems UPS power button shutting down my
system (I'm not kidding). Needless to say it had been about an hour since I last
saved any of the work and now it has to be redone. Well I am giving up for the night
and getting to bed since I'm on duty at the fire station tomorrow.
I got an email back from the person who said their PIII no longer worked
after rinsing it off under water as I had mentioned. He blew some air under the
processor core where there is a small gap between it and the PCB and sure enough he said
there was still water in there. After blowing all the water out and allowing the
PIII to completely dry he is back in business again. Told ya those processors are
tough.
Joe from Overclockers.com
just sent me notice that Skip has completed a review of the STEP
Thermodynamics PIII 500...
"Conclusions:
Lifetime Warranty, CPU at cost, a very effective cooling system, and a company that
is really concerned that you are happy with your investment makes a STEP Enhanced CPU a
great investment in my opinion. If you want a very good performing CPU/Cooling System that
you can just plug in and forget it. The STEP Enhanced CPU is the way to go. Many years of
Engineering and design have made a system that works as advertised and STEP is so
confident, they will stand behind it forever. STEP also sells 133Mhz and 150Mhz Memories
with Lifetime Warranty's that you can purchase along with your CPU/Cooling System. They
are also in the process of ramping up for some Overclocked K7 action!" |
I already got email from somebody who washed his PIII off in the
sink after "lapping" the processor surface and now his PIII doesn't work. I
do not and have not ever recommended "lapping" the surface of a PIII. I
dont think it is necessary and the OLGA material that the "slug" is made from is
not a metal such as on the Celerons. If you do wash your processor off by dunking it
in water as I do then you MUST make sure it is absolutely dry before you
put power to that sucker. The PIII has a very small space between the processor core
and the PCB that would easily hold some moisture for a while unless perhaps some type of
compressed air is used to remove it. I always let my processors dry at least
overnight and I use compressed air to blow most of the moisture from them immediately
after rinsing them off.
Keep in mind that although "lapping" has
gotten to be a common procedure if done incorrectly it will damage your processor and that
includes any technique you use to clean the dust from it once your done. The
processors will not be damaged when they are wet as long as they are not powered until
they are absolutely and completely dry.
The Tech Zone has
an review
article of yet another heatsink. This one is interesting and I believe it
definitely has some potential with some fine-tuning. It is called the AMK SECC80
designed for SECC2 processors...
| "Size wise, the SECC80 is
the same height and length as Global Win's VES20 or TennMax TF coolers. However the SECC80
is twice as deep. It's like taking 2 Global Win VES20 or TennMax TF and sticking them
together!" |
Speaking of heatsink review articles
Overclockin.com has one of their own with many different types of processor heatsinks
covered. Gary covers a lot of detailed information and it makes for a long read but
as usual with his reviews he left no stone unturned...
| "Well, you've seen reviews of some of the
heatsinks in this review before. Well, now you can see how they directly compare to
each other. I've tested a couple of Socket 7 / 370 heatsinks (GlobalWin VCP08 and
Socket Sinker from 3DCOOL), three PIII (SECC2) heatsinks (GlobalWin VGS08, TennMax P3TF,
and Vantec P3D-5030), and four Slot1 Celeron heatsinks (Alpha P125S, Swiftech's MC2 and
MC3, and TennMax Celeron TF). Did any of the heatsinks win the coveted Overclockin
Choice Award?" |
I got a chance to hit a movie tonight with the wife. If you
have not seen "The Sixth Sense" then you gotta check it out.
I got the review of the 3DfxCool
BigMoFo-REX PPGA Cooler up. If you thought the GlobalWIN FDP-32 was a performer
then you need to check this bad boy out.
Man has the weather been crazy lately or what? First early
last week there was Hurricane Floyd now yesterday my area of Florida gets hit with
Tropical Storm Harvey. I got called into the fire station automatically canceling my
time off this week but fortunately it was nothing more then some heavy rain.
Hopefully I should have a little review action up sometime late tonight.
I have to polish the final words on the BigMoFo-REX-FAN by 3DfxCool review and the Swiftech MC1000 article will now be in two parts.
Part 1 will be for PPGA applications and part 2 will be for PIII slot1.
I get a lot
of email asking me about sanding PPGA processor slugs. It is not
"science" and I'm not gonna go into details right now since there are a bunch of
good "how-to" articles on other sites but I do have something to say. I
have seen a lot of information about how the processor has to be protected from the dust
and moisture when you flatten the slug. Listen people, that damn processor is a lot
tougher then you think so dont be afraid to get a little sloppy. I use a little
soapy water and silicon carbide sandpaper to do the sanding then I just rinse the
processor off under water when I'm done allowing it to completely dry before I use
it...
It will work just fine.
I guess Florida lucked out with Hurricane Floyd but unfortunately
states to the North were not so lucky. Actually since Floyd kinda grazed the coast
for a few hours before making landfall he blew off a lot of energy first thank goodness.
Sorry about my incorrect directions in my previous news update (thanks
DJ for the correction), I typed that "Floyd was WSW of Florida"
at the time and I should of typed "ESE of Florida", thats why I
always stay within sight of land when I go boating. For those of you in Texas who
evacuated your homes needlessly based on my incorrect location of Floyd I apologize.
: )
I would also like to thank those of you who offered my family a safe
place to stay if incase my area had to evacuate and I was stuck at work. Seems like
OCers do have big hearts.
I did a little preliminary testing of the Swiftech MC1000 PPGA cooler
and I am definitely pleased with it's abilities. Stay tuned for the review article
which I should have completed by Tuesday evening at the latest.
SysOp Solutions
has a picture of LeadTek's
WinFast GForce 256 video card if your interested. There is also a review of the Vantec P3-D5030 cooler over there so check that out too.
Overclockers
Australia did a little review
action on the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder Card that you can read here.
Not really OC info but interesting just the same.
I got an email from my good buddy Tillman of The Heatsink Guide about the PolarLogic heatsinks I talked about a few days ago. Seems Tillman had
the opportunity to test a few samples and he said they weren't worth mentioning, nuff
said. Thats a shame cause they sure do look nice.
I heard from AbsolutePC
the other day and they have an article I found interesting...
| "I just wrote up an article, deciding that I
needed to get something up while we are in the process of a total reworking of the
internal coding of our site. I take a look at big business, the reasons small
competitors can't cope and Linux and Be from a bit of a gaming perspective." |
Oh ya and HardOCP
did a write-up on the ALPHA P3125S cooler. Since I may never get time
to finish my review you might want to check out what Kyle had to say.
Things may get a little crazy for me the next few days. As I
write this Hurricane Floyd lies a couple of hundred miles to the WSW of Florida packing
sustained winds of 155MPH and getting stronger by the hour. It was 1992 when
Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida taking 62 lives with him and Floyd is already larger
and more powerful. Expected landfall is forecast around early Wednesday morning and
I'll be on duty at the fire station. It is unlikely that the community I live in on
the West Coast of Florida will suffer much damage but I suspect my department will be
sending men and equipment to the East Coast as soon as the high winds subside. That
means either I will be spending a couple of weeks away from home to help support the
emergency services of the hardest hit communities or I'll be working a lot of overtime at
my home fire station to fill in for manpower. There is a chance that Floyd may turn
North but somebody somewhere is gonna get it bad. Needless to say news updates here
on the site may be lacking for at least a few days.
For the latest satellite imagery loop of Hurricane Floyd check here.
When things do get back to normal for me I have the Swiftech MC1000 cooler in
my possession and a modified GlobalWIN
FDP-32 called the BigMoFo-REX-FAN by 3dfxCool with a big 80mm fan that puts out 40cfm of air begging for
some review action.
I just got notice that SysOp Solutions has added another installment to there liquid cooling
series. Your gonna freak at the high quality of this installation and engineering,
very nice stuff so go check out the Liquid Cooling Your CPU (part II) article.
As a little "addendum" to my PPGA Cooler Shootout article I've played
around with the GlobalWIN FDP-32 a bit to see if there was an easy alternative to mounting
the fan that would allow the assembly to better fit onto some mobos (SOYO) without
blocking DIMM slots when a slotket card is used. It is a very simple modification
requiring only two 1 1/4" sheet metal screws. The performance difference after
the mod is about 1c warmer (not a big deal) and now all the DIMM slots are available on
the test rig's Soyo 6BA+III...
 |
 |
| The standard FDP-32 setup. |
After the fan re-mount. |
 |
 |
| The fan hangs over a bit. |
A different view. |
 |
 |
| Only two sheet metal
screws. |
Need a closer look? |
| The black wire
is a remote temperature sensor. |
It only takes a couple of minutes to remount the fan so it
is a really easy modification. If you are concerned about losing those DIMM slots
then you should definitely check out the possibility of performing the same procedure on
your FDP-32. The FDP-32 is a very good PPGA heatsink and the price has been getting
lower almost every day as competition heats up a little between vendors.
I've been busy working my butt off presenting original material for
you folks to enjoy so now I'm gonna take a break and point you to some other sites with
interesting news and information...
As usual HardOCP is tuning out the tid-bits. Looks like some interesting
preliminary info on a sweet looking heatsink design. Its from the folks who designed
the "Snow Leopard" even though I never saw that one again after the intro.
Maybe they just "look good".
Also check out HardOCP
for a little review action concerning the ever popular "FragTape", Kyle tells it like it is so dont expect him to flatter
his own baby if it doesn't deserve it. There is also some preliminary info regarding
Abit's BE6-II.
I got an interesting cache cooling setup in the mail from Xample Technologies called the
"Xtreme Heat Sink". It's a setup that includes a cache cooler plate and
rear heatsink for the PII. It is designed to be used along with a standard PII
heatsink cooler so take a look at the included parts...
Unfortunately I dont have an operational PII around the computer lab
right now but lucky for us Skip over at Overclockers.com has just put up a review on the Extreme
Heatsink and it looks like it may have some performance benefits.
The PPGA Cooler
Shootout article is up so check that out if your in the market for some PPGA cooling
action. I even recorded test data with the ALPHA PFH6035
both "blowing" and "sucking".
Agg over at Overclockers
Australia has a good article on Slug Sanding How-To,
you need to check it out if your thinking about such a procedure for your own processor.
There is also some info regarding some peltier experiments on the front page.
For those of you eager to jump into the Athlon game then Humphrey
from PCNut has some interesting (not so
good) news to share...
| "Just in case any of your readers ask you
about K7 motherboard, steer them clearly from MSI MS-6167, at least for now! I was
crazy enough to ordered in a K7-500 processor and that board in on Friday, wanting to run
some benchmarks for myself and few potential university customers. What a
mistake!" |
Humphrey goes on to talk about mysterious reboots, black
screens, and a list of other problems with no success at all after lots of effort.
Oh well, whats that they always say about buying the first model year
of a new car? Wait till they get all the "bugs" worked out.
BXBoards has been busy
reviewing i810 boards, so far they have the AOpen MX3W and the Gigabyte
GA-6WMM7 done.
I spent today having a little fun that the site has kept me away from
lately. One of my hobbies is R/C (remote control) airplanes so I took off from the
house early this morning packing one of my older (the first I actually built myself
several years ago) airplanes and headed for the club's flying field...
|
|
72" wingspan
"Tiger 60" |
All ages like to fly. |
Lots of Sunday fun when I get to go flying.
Hopefully in the near future I'll get the chance to finish the 96"
span Cap 232 model I started at the beginning of the year that I have not had the time to
work on in six months. I just wanted to include this personal side note about my
"other" hobby, sorry if I bored you.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome
UnlimitedHardware.com's newest sponsor Outside Loop Computers. This addition to the sponsorship team
now rounds out the best and most complete hardware vendors available. This site is
very fortunate to have such an elite backbone of support which will result in this site
becoming bigger and better providing more news and information including even more review
articles on the latest and hottest hardware. Folks let me tell you something, I know
how difficult it can be when your searching on-line for reliable vendors to make your next
hardware purchase from. You always have that uneasy feeling when dealing for the
first time with somebody wondering about the reliability and honesty of that vendor.
Well the sponsors I accept for this site are the best. They are
the most knowledgeable and reliable not to mention they stock all the latest popular OC
high performance hardware. Most of all they practice their trade with the highest
level of integrity and thats why you see their banners and buttons here on
UnlimitedHardware.com. I get many offers for advertising but I'm picky as hell and I
dont accept just anybody, these are the folks I recommend to my own family and friends and
you have no need to look any further for your hardware needs.
One quick note here about Outside Loop Computers is that they have recently received a batch of
new PPGA 300s that are doing 558MHz and some even as high as 580MHz! To think you
thought the 300a was dead. If you think you might be interested then there may be
some more information concerning availability of this new batch of processors in the next
day or two at their site.
|
Celeron 300 PPGA @
580MHz! |
Just in case you have
not noticed I've added two new pages of some interest concerning ALPHA heatsinks.
First I put together a little simple diagram to help illustrate the assembly of the ALPHA PFH6035 socket7 / 370 (PPGA) heatsink
since it seems some folks have a hard time deciding where those little aluminum stand-offs
go. The second new page is a pictorial stepping you through the assembly of the ALPHA P3125S, ALPHA's newest heatsink which is
for SECC2 processors. The pictures for the P3125S are very good and offer those who
have not yet seen this work of art a good look.
While I was working at the fire
department (my full-time job) yesterday I received the new GlobalWIN FEP-32 heatsink in
the mail courtesy of PLYCON Computers.
This is the last addition I had been waiting on to finish the
"PPGA Cooling Shootout" article. I went ahead today and recollected
temperature and performance data on all the heatsinks included in the article to make sure
I had the most accurate information possible. Look for the finished article tomorrow
night at the latest.
One more addition to heatsink news
here...
Not being one to leave "well
enough" alone I did a little experimenting with Vantec's newest heatsink for the P3
called the P3-5030. It is a pretty good P3 cooler in it's stock form with a good
size heatsink and nice high performance Y.S. Tech 50mm fans but there is room for
improvement as seen here...
|
|
The stock P3-5035 |
A little 60mm fan mod
action |
Photo of
stock P3-5035 courtesy of HardOCP |
I took
off the stock fan assembly and added two 60mm fans for a considerable improvement in
performance. The fans were easily attached with nylon zip-ties and I recorded the
following data on a P3 at 600MHz...
| Stock Vantec P3-5035 |
Modified P3-5035 with 60mm
fans |
| 51.7c / 125f |
35.0c / 95f |
Special thanks to 2CoolTEK for supplying the
Vantec P3-5035 heatsink.
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