Alpha Intel S478 Heatsink - S-PAL8952 Review

Cooling/CPU Cooling by jmke @ 2004-03-16

Alpha has delivered a solid solution for the P4 with their new updated release of the PAL heatsink. A few minor adjustments to the pins (height/form) has brought the performance on par with other high end products while the mounting system could have benefited from an overhaul as the installation is still quite a time consuming process.

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In the box

Introduction

Today we have the pleasure to bring you a quite exciting review, Alpha has been around from the beginning with their high quality heatsinks. Since the launch of Socket A and the AMD socket processor we have seen a massive boom in the sales of custom heatsinks. Alpha’s PAL8045 delivered excellent performance and is still regarded with respect even today, after almost 3 years! Alpha introduced their Intel P4 solution in 2002, the PAL8942. Today we have in our test lab their latest Intel heatsink: S-PAL8952. Whether the S- stands for Super we are here to find out.

Since the release of the earlier Alpha products the world has moved on. Back then people wanted extreme performance no matter what the noise. Today however we want silence and good performance. To this end we decided to compare the new Alpha breed to a well known silent power, the Zalman CNPS7000-Cu.

On with the show:

Madshrimps (c)


Alpha provides 3 different version of their heatsink:

  • S-PAL8952T (no fan, no thermal grease) ~$44
  • S-PAL8952M81 (47cfm 80mm fan, thermal grease) ~$55
  • S-PAL8952M82 (20cfm 80mm fan, thermal grease) ~$61

    The thermal grease they include comes from Microforg, Model YG6260-5 to be exact. A comparison review versus Arctic Silver 3 and others can be found here.

    They also provide all the mounting hardware needed, the installation method hasn’t changed, so you’ll have to remove your motherboard in order to install this heatsink.

    Madshrimps (c)


    Let’s get it installed ->
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