Project 560

I originally had a Global Win triple heatsink on this CPU and I was going to continue to use that, until I got an ICQ page from a reader from Japan. He told me he used an Alpha heatsink for his Celeron 300 running at 527 and said I should use one for Project 560? I was like "What the hell is an Alpha?"

This is an Alpha

Without a doubt, the Alpha 125 is the biggest heatsink for a CPU I've ever seen. The picture really don't do it justice. Alpha heatsinks are not sold in the US or Canada. However you can expect some dealers to start carrying them soon.

Alpha does have an office in the US but it's mostly to provide companies, not consumers, with custom built heat sink products. However they have decided to make this unit available to anyone who wants it. Here are the terms:

1. We do not sell heat sinks yet with fans. We do not manufacture fans.  We are evaluating fans from several venders and we intend to provide fans in the future. In the meantime we suggest that you obtain fans from the open market that you can attach to our heat sinks.

2. Some of our heat sinks such as P125, P126 do not meet with the design guide that CPU makers recommend. They are made based on the requests from Japanese users. Because of size, weight, the center of gravity and etc, the chances are that they might not attach to CPU or motherboard and/or it may cause damage to other components near the heat sinks.   We advise before ordering that you compare the size of heat sinks in the catalog with the space on the motherboard. (please see our homepage: http://www.micforg.co.jp/cindexe.html )

3. The performance data in the catalog are based on our measurement method but there is no guarantee.

4. We only guarantee against manufacturing defects.   Please understand that we have no responsible for the damage that may occur because of the use of our heat sinks.

[ Ordering ]
We accept Email or FAX order.  Please let us know your address, name, telephone number, the model number, quantity and shipping method.
Email: alpha@po.micforg.co.jp
FAX: 408-749-7067

[ Price ]
The price of P125C(no fans, includes intake cover) based
on 1 pcs. is US$43.00 (about same price in Japan) + shipping charges. Please let me know for other products.

[ Shipping Method ]
Unless otherwise specified we will ship UPS.

[ Delivery ]
Approximately two weeks

[ Payment ]
If the total cost is over US$100.00, you will be required to pay
before shipment.  For order less than US$100 we can invoice
with shipment and payment is due upon receipt, net ten days.

Sincerely,
ALPHA Company Ltd.

As you can read, Alpha is still thinking "company to company", otherwise they would never have a net 10 days term. :-)

The Alpha 125 is a very smart design. It will work with both PIIs and Celerons. For the PII, it mounts using 4 screws. These screws go into the same holes that the Factory Intel heatsink screws into. It's a good thing they use screws too. I hate dealing with the Torx bolts that the factory Intel heatsink uses. Once the sink is screwed in, you screw on the cover and then the fans and you're ready to rock!

The fans draw air away from the sink instead of blowing air down onto the sink. I don't know which way really works better but I decide to leave it the way Alpha designed it.

Can you say big heatsink? :-)

After screwing the Alpha heatsink to the heat transfer plate of the P!!, I stuck on 2 copper spacers on the heat plate to fill the gap between the L2 cache and the Alpha heatsink. I decided to put the CPU housing back on because I fear that with such a heavy heatsink, the CPU would fall out of the CPU slot if I should bump the computer. With the CPU housing back on, the unit slides into the Slot 1 "rails" and is held nice and secured. I wonder how people with Celerons will mount this unit since Celerons don't take advantage of those Slot 1 rails.

After putting the system back together, it was time to starting overclocking. I enter the Abit BX6-2's softmenu and set the bus up to 124Mhz and crank the voltage up to 2.3V.

The PCI devices have no problems with the 124Mhz bus speed. When using the 124Mhz bus of the BX6-2 the PCI bus speed will be divided by 4 instead of 3. This means the PCI devices will be running at 31Mhz. A little under the default 33Mhz they are supposed to run at.

The AGP video card is supposed to run at 66Mhz. The Abit motherboard gives you a choice of running the AGP card at 1 to 1 or 2/3 speed. When using the 100Mhz bus, you have to set your AGP ratio to 2/3 (2/3 of 100 is 66). It might work at 1 to 1 but I doubt it. When running the 124Mhz bus, the AGP card (Viper 550 in this case) is running at 82.6Mhz! It's too bad that Abit didn't put in a 1/2 divider for the AGP bus. The Viper 550 runs pretty hot and the overclock AGP port only makes it run hotter (faster too, he he). It's very important to keep the video card cool. Click here to see how that is done.

The end result is a stable 560Mhz system. I let it run Quake 2 timedemos for 2 hours and it didn't break a sweat. I have since back the voltage down to 2.2V. Still a little higher voltage than I wanted (it does 527Mhz at 2V) but the Alpha does a great job of getting rid of the heat given off by the CPU. Using the same In Win ATX case as Project 527 (and a total of 10 fans), the whole system runs at just 26C at 560Mhz. :-)

One last note. I did try this heatsink on the Project 527 CPU to see if it would allow it to run at 560Mhz. It didn't. Which just shows that you have to have luck on your side to run at this speed level.

Let See Some Benchmarks!.