- Back to homepage
- Related articles
  Related articles

Battle of the Titans: Alpha PAL8942 vs Swiftech MCX4000

Cooling/CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2002-09-18

Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to Madshrimps for another exciting edition of reviewing sensation. In the black corner wearing an 80mm fan, the undisputed champion of the world, Mister Alpha PAL8942. In the silver corner is the challenger, 2 times heavyweight champion of the world, now getting ready to make a come back after a long time of absence, ladies and gentleman, Mister Swiftech MCX4000. Let’s get ready to rumble…

The Silver Corner

Swiftech MCX4000:

The AMD heatsink champion comes to the P4 side of town. Weighing in at 0.580kg this is one heavy badass. He also comes pre-equipped with a fan, 75x15mm providing almost 37cfm of airflow. (A normal 80mm fan can also be installed on the heatsink without any problems)
Packed together with a tube of Artic Alumina for optimal performance it´s entry in the P4 world will be strong. His current price in Belgium is not yet known, but we will update the information as soon as he makes it public!

Madshrimps (c)

The provided instruction sheet is easy to follow and explains in few steps how to install the HS.

Madshrimps (c)

Unfortunately they included plastic flange nuts, so when removing the heatsink I ended up with the standoffs still connected to the screws, instead of the motherboard. And it doesn´t stop there, the standoffs are completely round, so stopping them from turning around is a lot harder then alfa´s square standoffs.

Update: Since the publishing of this article, Swiftech has changed the supplied flange nuts with metal ones and also changed the way the springs are attached to the heatsink, this way the problem mentioned before will no longer occur! thumbs up @ Swiftech!

Madshrimps (c)

new and improved way to attach the standoffs, square and no longer plastic but metal!

When trying to screw down the heatsink on the motherboard I noticed it was pushing hard against some capacitors next to the CPU socket, I put some insulation tape around them "in case of" but these problems should no longer occur on current Mobo/Heatsink combinations. Either Asus or Swiftech didn´t keep to specs, but I´ve not read of this problem anywhere on the net, so It must be the motherboard :/

Madshrimps (c)

Heatsink touching the capacitors next to the CPU socket

Of course not all is bad, and I must say I was surprised at how silent the 70mm fan was. It is only a bit louder then the Intel fan, put pushed way more air!. The reason the fan is so silent may have something to do with the following:

Madshrimps (c)

Removing sound from the trembling of the fan against the heatsink, it works pretty good!

Our second contestant is now ready for battle, let´s get it on!

Madshrimps (c)

All information and graphics contained in Madshrimps are sole property of the Madshrimps crew and may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without written permission from us.