Alpha P125s
I ordered a Alpha P125S (for PIII) heatsink from 3dfxcool to chill down my PIII
450 CPU. 3 days later, I went to get it at the postoffice. The heatsink came
in a nice white box to prevent damage to it. Well, I unpacked it, and found
out it was as huge as I expected. The two fans are 60x60x25 mm each and the
heatsink is about 65mm long and 65mm tall. Add 25 to 65mm, and it's height is
90 mm tall with the fans!
Now, I had to put it together, cause the heatsink and fans came in parts. It
was no big deal, if you have problems putting it together, read the manual that
is included with the heatsink a bit better. I used about 20 minutes to put it
together (cause I chatted with some friends on irc at the same time). It is
recommended that the fans suck for best affect (blowing is recommended for other
heatsinks, but not the Alpha), I talked to some guys about this, and they confirmed
that sucking gave best affect (the manual illustrates the heatsink with the
fans mounted to suck too).
I took some thermal compound on the CPU and Heatsink, and screwed them together.
The CPU get's a very nice contact with the alpha with the screws that is included
in the kit (you need thermal compound too of course), so that heat can be removed
as quickly and efficiently as possible (the back of the alpha is covered with
a copper plate to transfer heat). Then it was time to plug the CPU into my Asus
P3B-F mainboard. It went as smooth as it could go, only downaide was that the
alpha blocked 1 of my 4 DIMM slots, so I had to put my 128 mb an 64 mb SDRAM
chips into RAM slots 3 and 4, no real problem actually, since I won't be using
all DIMM slots anyway.
booted up my PC, and entered BIOS. My PIII 450 (SL35D week 34 from Philippines
with 4 ns SEC cache) had been running at 2.1 volts for some days to burn it
in a little. I set the FSB to 133 mhz (1/4 PCI) at once, and restarted. Excited,
I watched the computer boot into windows 98. Yes, 600 mhz! I ran RC5 and quake
for a while to see if it was stable, after 24 hours without a single crash I
decided it was as stable as it could be.
So, I rebooted and set the volt to 2.00. Botted into windows without any trouble,
but freezed while loading RC5. Then I tried 2,05 volts, windows booted up fine,
same with RC5 etc. But after 10 minutes windows freezed. Looked like 2.1 volts
was the limit for the CPU. I'll try tp run it at 450 mhz with 2.2 volts for
a while to see if I can get it stable with 2,0 volts at 600 mhz.
I was quite amazed that my PIII 450 did 600 mhz that easily. It's still running
stable at 600 mhz with 2.1 volts, haven't seen any suspicious behaviour yet.
Alpha P125S is a amazing heatsink, my CPU temperature is 35-39 celcius and system
temperature is 25-30 celcius.I recommend all overclockers who aren't satisfied
with their retail fan. and want to boost a few mhz out of their processor. Even
if a alpha heatsink isn't as good as a watercooled or peltier-cooled processor,
it is a good investment for the average overclocker. If you can afford it, then
buy it!
