fans@3dfxcool.com

  It doesn't seem like so long ago that I was eagerly opening the box to my new Voodoo 3D graphics card.  Nobody really knew about the Voodoo yet and OpenGL and Glide were reserved for the high-end commercial graphics industry.  Well we all quickly became familiar with those wonderful Voodoo cards and the terrific world of 3D gaming.  Not being one to let "well-enough" alone it was my next challenge to overclock the chipset on the Voodoo.  I decided the default 52MHz just was not enough so marching down the MHz road to 60MHz I quickly stumbled because of the all-to-familiar heat issue.  To save my little Voodoo from a high temperature demise was 3DfxCool and their original product which was developed specifically to keep the Voodoo chipset in the operational temperature zone.  Since then 3DfxCool has greatly expanded their product line to include not only video card cooling solutions but processor coolers, HD coolers, and high quality case cooling fans.  When Bart Lane from 3DfxCool contacted me about their new PPGA cooler and started talking about 80mm fans I got really interested.  Knowing that Bart has specialized in improving upon already great products I definitely had to give the BigMoFo-REX a look.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the BigMoFo-REX...

  We all know from the test data that I collected during the PPGA Cooler Shootout article that the GlobalWIN FDP-32 is/was the best off-the-shelf cooling solution available for your PPGA processor.  Well leave it up to 3DfxCool to work their magic and come up with one better.  The BigMoFo-REX is not really a completely new cooler, it is actually a GlobalWIN FDP-32 heatsink with the addition of an 80mm three pin cooling fan replacing the standard 60mm fan.

  Thats right boys and girls, 40cfm of pumping 12 volt cooling action. Keep in mind that the standard Y.S. Tech 60mm fan that the FDP-32 is delivered with as a standard feature is rated at 27cfm.  You do the math and I'm sure you see where we are going with this.  More airflow equals better cooling performance and thats what we want a heatsink for in the first place isn't it?

Pass the shoehorn to fit this bad boy...

  One of the down sides of the standard FDP-32 is that on many slot1 motherboards when used with a slotket card the heatsink will block as many as 3 DIMM slots.  Unfortunately the BigMoFo-REX can be even a bit more of a challenge when it comes to real-estate on the mobo.  When I first tried installing it on a Soyo SY-6BA+III I found that the large 80mm fan interfered with a capacitor that stuck up.   Fortunately I was able to still fit the BigMoFo-REX with a little planning.   All I had to do was slightly loosen the four mounting screws that held the fan brackets to the heatsink itself.  This created a little "play" which allowed me to slightly off-set the fan towards the top (as mounted on a slotket) of the heatsink by about 1/16 of an inch which was all I needed to clear the capacitor that was sticking up from the 6BA+III.  I also tried the BigMoFo-REX on an Abit BX6-2.  Fortunately the BigMoFo-REX did not block any DIMM slots on the BX6-2 and the only clearance concern was the green chipset heatsink on the mobo.  The green chipset heatsink actually aided in helping to support the mass of the BigMoFo-REX since it rested upon it slightly when mounted to my MSI-6905 slotket adapter courtesy of PCNut.

Did I say Better performance...

  Ya thats right, the BigMoFo-REX beat out the PPGA Cooler Shootout winner the GlobalWIN FDP-32.  Thats no small accomplishment since I was pretty sure that the FDP-32 was not gonna be de-throned by any other conventional type cooling solution.  I tested the BigMoFo-REX in the same setup as was used in the PPGA Cooler Shootout article and it clearly outperformed the standard FDP-32 by almost a full 2c as measured from the Celeron 366's internal temperature diode.

  Could it be better improved...

  Perhaps a project down the road for me I do have an idea that could improve the performance of the BigMoFo-REX even more.  Keep in mind that the 80mm fan has a large hub in the center of the fan blade which I suspect directs a lot of airflow out the sides of the BigMoFo-REX's heatsink instead of down the interior of the fins.  I would like to try making a shroud of sorts that would help better direct all the airflow through the fins as much as possible.  I suspect that such a modification would even better utilize that 40cfm of air that the 80mm fan is pumping improving the cooling performance of the BigMoFo-REX even more.

  We have a new winner...

  So it is obvious that 3DfxCool has a winning product here.  The BigMoFo-REX is definitely the new PPGA cooler king now.  Though the size of the BigMoFo-REX definitely has to be taken into consideration, I highly recommend it for the ultimate in PPGA cooling if absolute performance is your goal and you are not ready to challenge the inconveniences of peltiers or water cooling.