The situation with Intel Pentium III processors cooling has always been like this. The customer bought this processoreither in a colorful box with the cooler already fastened to it or paid another 5-10 bucks for a cooler by some third manufacturer.If this customer turned out to be an overclocker, he did his best to find the best cooler, which could provide the most effectiveworking CPU cooling and hence better overclocking results.

Now this situation may get suddenly changed. And as usual the one to blame for these changes will be Intel. The higher is theclock frequency, the greater heat Intel's new processors, as well as those made by other manufacturers, and all of them need avery effective means to dissipate this heat. Though the history of Intel Pentium III processors is not so long, their clockfrequencies have risen from the initial 450MHz to 600MHz in the beginning of August. The graph below shows how the processorsheating increased depending on the growing frequency:

Well, Intel Pentium III 600 seems to have surpassed all its predecessors in terms of heat emission, with the only exception ofvery old processors based on Klamath1 core. And this fact makes us believe that Pentium III 600 should have better cooling thanits predecessors. However, there is the whole set of different conditions. Take for instance Intel's artful decision to demonstratemore serious attitude towards the core working temperature, which is now 5 degrees less (compare: 85 against 90 by predecessors).Note that here we mean those temperature values taken by the integrated on-die thermal diode - junction temperatures. But theappearance of the 600MHz processors has significantly aggravated the situation. Besides the increased clock frequency, the newprocessor can also boast 0.05V higher core voltage - 2.05V, which also implies better cooling.

It is probably caused by the fact that Katmai architecture with the growing clock frequencies slowly becomes obsolete. Theysay and we believe it's true that Katmai won't be able to survive till the mass production of pieces with the working frequencyover 1GHz: this threshold for sure will remain its unattainable goal. However, it is not the reasons we are interested in but thefinal result: the cooling of newer processors deserves extra attention. In particular, we failed to make our Intel Pentium III600MHz we got for testing work stable with an ordinary noname cooler.

But in this respect a very natural question arises. We can't actually make out why the "boxed" coolers supplied together withthe 550MHz processors look absolutely the same for 600MHz ones as well. Why so? And in fact it is just the first impression.Starting from Pentium 550 Intel began utilizing a new type of heat interface - thermal paste with better heat conduction. Forthe time being it appeared quite enough.

And what shall the buyers of OEM processors without preinstalled coolers do in this case? Of course, they should better buyhigh quality products instead of the ordinary noname devices. For instance, such as Vantec P3D-5030, which we managed to receivefor testing. So, let's get started.

Specification

Vantec P3D-5030 cooler is intended for processors in SECC2 cartridges.

• Dimensions: 137x58x44.6mm
• Power voltage: 12V direct current
• Two fans 50x50x10mm
• Fan rotation speed: 5200rpm
• Air flow: 12.5 CFM
• Noise level: 33dB
• Fans MTBF: 50,000 hours
• Three-contact power connector, connected to the mainboard
• Anodized aluminium heatsink

Of course, this info is too scant to imagine this cooler. And it is really a worthy thing! Take a look:

However, attractive exterior is not its only advantage. Let's watch Vantec P3D-5030 at work. But before we start we wouldlike to particularly dwell on the cooler construction.

Construction

As you can see on the picture the cooler consists of four main parts.

1. Protective grating, which prevents the fans from any foreign objects, which may occasionally fall inside. However, we don'tquite understand what kind of "foreign objects" may appear in the computer case, so that such massive protection is needed.That's why we believe this grating will simply hinder the normal airflow accumulating dust and providing irritating noise.
2. Two fans. A pair of fans is undoubtedly better than a single one, but there is also something to cavil at. The thing isthat the first fan has three contacts and the second one only two, that is why if the latter stops (having absorbed too muchdust from the protective grating, for instance) then the user won't notice anything while the overall cooling will getconsiderably worse.
3. Massive aluminium heatsink. Well, here everything is tiptop: nine high fins with special cross-dents, which make theworking surface of the heatsink much larger and guarantee good heat dissipation. They chose aluminium for the heatsinkbecause it is a relatively good heat conductive material at the same time being quite cheap and easy to process.
4. The spring-clip is connected to the pins fastened to the heatsink, which go through SECC2. Here we have to give thisversion credit: it one of the best providing reliable and long lasting contact between the heatsink and the processor.

Installation

We would like to warn you right away that if you wish to use Vantec P3D-5030 to provide auspicious temperatureconditions for your beloved processor, you will have to sweat over it for quite a while. And the main reason thatmakes us say so is the giant size of the cooler. We tried to install the processor with this cooler onto ABIT BE6mainboard but we failed: the lower side of our heatsink ran against the heatsink fastened to i440BX chipset of themainboard. But we were not used to giving in at once. We replaced the relatively high chipset heatsink with thattaken from Chaintech 6BTM. Although this didn't help to eliminate the problem completely, we made some effort andmanaged to install the processor with the cooler into Slot 1. However, we were still not quite satisfied with theresult, because the processor was slightly bending to one side. That's why we removed the chipset heatsink at all.The processor with Vantec P3D-5030 cooler fitted just perfectly into the slot, but the absence of chipset coolingexerted its dreadful influence with the first boot: hardly had some time passed when the system crashed. So, we had toreturn back to the previous step: an alien chipset heatsink and an awry standing processor.

Of course, we may blame the mainboard for our problems, however, when we looked through Intel Pentium III ProcessorThermal Design Guidelines we found out that this cooler didn't meet Intel's standards in two dimensions out of the three:in depth and height. So, it is quite possible that the problems with the installation of this impressive cooling devicemay occur on the whole bunch of other mainboards. But nothing to do with it: you have to pay the price for perfectcooling and if it were not for the enormous size of Vantec P3D-5030 cooler the effect would appear not that great atall.

Well, let's continue. We suggest paying a bit of your precious attention to the heat interface used in Vantec P3D-5030.It is based on the foil covered with thermal paste to provide a better contact between the heatsink and the processor core.This paste helps to eliminate any cavities between the foil and the surface being cooled. However, this solution isunfortunately valid for one occasion only, because after the first time used some paste sticks to the CPU surface andremains there. Despite this inconvenience, the foil has a somewhat better heat conduction than the usually utilizedelastomers.

When we powered on the PC it turned out that the fans of Vantec P3D-5030 rotated with a bit different speed from thepromised 5200rpm - about 4700rpm. We can't say that it will greatly influence the cooling quality, but it slightly upsetsus anyway: instead of the promised 12.5 CFM of air on practice we get only 11.3

Vantec P3D-5030 fans are equipped with two ball bearings. It is a very advantageous thing because firstly, it prolongsthe fans endurance and secondly, greatly reduces the noise they make. In fact the noise is very likely to be caused not bythe rubbing of some fan parts, but by the airflow going through the grating. That is why Vantec P3D-5030 has every rightto be called a relatively quiet device.

However, we won't be able to describe the cooler's performance better than the real tests. So, let's pass over to thepractical part of our review.

Tests

The testing system assembled for the Vantec cooler was configured as follows:

• Intel Pentium III 600MHz CPU;
• ABIT BE6 mainboard;
• ASUS V3800 Ultra graphics card;
• IBM DJNA 372200 HDD;
• 128MB SEC PC-100 SDRAM;
• Windows98 SE.

The processor temperature was taken with an external thermistor, which goes together with ABIT BE6 mainboard.The sensor was stuck to the inner side of the heatsink directly near the processor core, that's why the realtemperature of the CPU will be slightly higher than the values we post.

The temperature was taken several times during the test Business Winstone99 and the final value represents theaverage.

When we installed an ordinary noname cooler onto Intel Pentium III 600, the processor temperature quickly wentup and having reached 71 degree the processor successfully crashed. Well, well, the ordinary coolers seem to beabsolutely unfit for 600MHz CPU cooling.

When we installed Vantec P3D-5030 cooler onto Intel Pentium III 600, the processor temperature remained somewhereclose to 52.2 degrees. All the tests were successfully finished.

Of course, this victory, and especially such complicated cooling system, inspired us to immediately overclock theprocessor. However, Intel Pentium III proved extremely badly overclockable: all the tests were carried out with theFSB frequency increased only to 103MHz and processor frequency - to 618MHz. The CPU temperature rose to 54 degrees.And with the external frequency set to 105MHz the processor crashed during the tests. We decided not to increase thecore voltage remembering about the gift of Pentium III L2 cache to get burned in conditions like that, especially ifwe bear in mind that the CPU was working at 2.05V already.

So, we have every reason to repeat once again, what we have already mentioned in the very beginning: high qualityprocessor cooling becomes more and more important. And Vantec P3D-5030 cooler due to its extraordinary design providesbrilliant conditions for normal work of high speed CPUs such as Intel Pentium III 600MHz.

Conclusions

If you are seriously thinking about your SECC2 processor cooling, then a powerful device, such as Vantec P3D-5030,will be the right choice. Of course, it is not deprived of some drawbacks, but its perfect technical characteristicsand highly original design are really worth your attention.

Highs

• Beautiful design
• Highly effective cooling
• Comfortable and reliable retention

Lows

• Giant size
• Small construction defects