Posted: 12/21/2000
Written by: MotoŽ
Price: $49.95 Canadian ($34.00 US)
Supplied by: AMK Services

Alpha is never one to sit on its successes. Every since the original P125 cooler, which took the overclocking world by storm, Alpha has continued introducing more and better products. The PAL6035 is their latest offering and for AMD Thunderbird owners, it's a reason to celebrate. 

The Alpha PAL6035 is the replacement for the FC-PAL35T. Visually, the PAL 6035 looks exactly the same as the PC-PAL35T it replaced. The main difference is the PAL6035 will work with AMD Thunderbird CPUs where as the FC-PAL35T would not. 

Notice the four plastic pegs of the old FC-PAL35T? Those are used to ensure the heatsink mounts flush to Intel Coppermine CPU. The contact area of a Coppermine CPU is very small and it's very easy to mount the heatsink not flushed. The pegs fixes this problem. Those pegs are also the reason the FC-PAL35T won't work with an AMD processor. As you can see from the pic of the above AMD CPU, the Alpha's plastic peg would hit the rubber pegs of the AMD processor, making for no contact between the heatsink and CPU core. Want a good way to melt your new T Bird? Use a FC-PAL35T on it. :)

The new Alpha PAL6035 doesn't have the plastic pegs of the old FC-PAL35T so it will work with AMD processors. However, the cooler will still work with Intel Coppermine processors and mounted totally flush. How did Alpha do it? Let's find out.

Next page: Taking a closer look

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