Cooling Athlon 64: Three Potential Aircooled Solutions @ Sudhain
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What we have here, really, are three different coolers for three types of users. For the thrifty user or a user who’s perfectly satisfied with temperatures in the mid 50s, the AMD stock cooler is a fine option that gets the job done. Since retail chips sell for so little over OEM these days, it’s easily worth the $11 you end up paying for it, especially once you factor in the three-year warranty.
For a user wanting to lower temperatures and cut costs the Silent Boost is a good choice. At $25.95 its not the cheapest option, but its low-noise and high performance are both good reasons to recommend it. It may not be as forward-looking as the SLK948U, but we need to point out that any discussion of what future AMD CPU temperatures will be is entirely conjectural. Because we aren’t going to base a product recommendation on what would be an entirely conjectural statement, we’d highly recommend the Silent Boost to anyone looking for a mid-range cooler with a mid-range price.
If the SLK948U carried the same price as the Silent Boost, it’d be the hands-down winner, no questions asked. At $43.95, however, its not a product we’d recommend for everyone. It does, however, offer a performance level and future-proof design commensurate with its price tag. Provided that AMD’s Socket 939 design is still compatible with Socket 940 / Socket 754 (and we’ve no reason to think it won’t be), the SLK948U should be able to handle any Opteron or Athlon 64 design well into the future.
| http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=536 | 