Written: 11/30/99
Written  by:  John "Moto" Chow
Athlon & Alpha supplied by: AMK Services

This was one of those "how can I get around this problem?" projects. My shiny new Athlon 550 was in need a cooler and I found out that with the Asus K7M motherboard, none of the big coolers would fit! The pic below should explain why.

The  main problem with Asus K7M is the ATX power connector is on the wrong side of the slot one rail. Big coolers like the Alpha P125 or Global Win FKK32 will completely block off the power connector. Since moving power connector is not an option (well, it is but I'm not going to try it), I came up with a new way to get the Alpha on the Athlon and clear that ATX connector.

The easiest way to get an Alpha to an Athlon would be to use an Alpha P125 because it snaps right in with no modifications required. This is because the Athlon uses the same mounting system as the Pentium II and the Alpha P125 is a PII cooler. However using a P125 on the Athlon and an Asus K7M is not an option because that ATX power connector is in the way.

The solution I came up with is to use an Alpha P3125 that was recently reviewed. The reason will become clear in a bit. Since the P3125 was designed for Pentium IIIs and not Athlon CPUs, I had to modify the heatsink so it would work with the AMD CPU. The end results is one cool running Athlon.

Next page: Why I used a P3125

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