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Alpha PAL6035 Heatsink


Date
: 01/4/01 – 02:20:09 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cooling

Manufactor: Alpha Corp.

Price: $35.95

Thanks to Coolerguys for supplying us with this great cooler!

Introduction

A while ago I was looking for a good cooler that would let me overclock my Duron to the magic 1GHz barrier without endangering my cpu because of heat. After consulting with the great folks at Coolerguys, I decided to give the Alpha PAL6035 a go. I know there are coolers that perform better, like the GlobalWin FOP38, but I was also looking for a cooler that does not sound like an airplane. Wondering how the Alpha performed? Let’s have a look …

Specifications

• Newly designed clip for the Socket A and 370
• Alpha heatsink
• Copper Embedded
• Model# PAL6035MFC
• Y.S TECH Fan ball-bearing fan
• 26 CFM
• Dual-ball Bearing fan
• Includes fan finger guard (fan grill)
• Includes 1.g G47 thermal compound

The Alpha PAL6035 has been designed to fit both Intel and AMD cpu’s. The previous revision had those small plastic feet mounted onto the heatsink, which were intended to stabilize the heatsink on the small core of P3 and Celeron cpu’s.

Unfortunately, for the lucky owners of AMD cpu’s, these feet where a big problem since these cpu’s are already equiped with feet. The only possible way to solve this, was by taking the plyers out of the closet and pull the feet out of the Alpha …

With this new revision, the smart engineers at Alpha decided not to pre-install these feet and including them in the box so owners of Intel cpu’s can stick them onto the heatsink (on the marked spots). Thanks to this clever move, the Alpha PAL6035 can be used on all cpu’s.

The engineers who designed the Alpha heatsink really did a good job, which is something you should not take for granted! The base of the heatsink exist out of pure copper, whereas the rest of the heatsink is build with aluminium. The copper base absorbs the heat faster then aluminium, but aluminium releases the heat faster. This way the heat is absorded pretty fast from the cpu core, and then the alu fins suck it away. I’m sure there is a much more scientific explanation to this technique, but I just wanted to explain how the whole idea behind the PAL6035 works.

The retention mechanism is one of the best I ever saw, although it is a bit hard to install at first it becomes a piece of cake after you did it twice :).

The peeps at Coolerguys included a Y.S. Tech 60mm fan which delivers a good 26CFM of airflow. You can also buy the PAL6035 with a Sunon 60mm fan which only delivers 23CFM but it generates less noise. The choice is yours: better airflow with more noise or less airflow with less noise. I opted for the first option. Please note that the price for both configurations is the same.

They also ship a fan guard to protect those curious fingers and a tube of thermal paste.

Installation

Installing a heatsink isn’t a very hard thing to do. You have to assemble the heatsink first, but Alpha included a very good manual (which you probably won’t need anyway). First you pull that white protection plastic of the shroud, then you align it with the wholes in the heatsink and you screw it together with the supplied screws. Not you screw the fan in place and you’re all set to install the heatsink onto the cpu.

First I installed a copper shim to make sure I don’t crush the core (CPU F/X got me those), then I applied some thermal paste onto the core of my Duron 600 and last but not least I installed the heatsink onto it. Just be careful on putting the heatsink onto the AMD cpu core or you’ll break it just as I did (you can read all about that here).

Performance

System Setup

- AMD Duron 600 @ 1GHz (supplied by OCZ)

- Abit KT7 RAID Motherboard (supplied by OCZ)

- 384MB PC150 Mushkin RAM

- Hercules Geforce GTS Ultra Videocard

- IBM 34GB UDMA100 7200rpm hard drive

- Windows 2000 + SP1 + 4.25a VIA drivers + 7.17 nVidia Detonator drivers

To see how good the Alpha would perform, I tested it against a generic AMD cooler which looks a lot like the TaiSol cooler.

I let the cpu crunch Rc5 keys while I ran Prime95 at the same time. Afther one hour of testing I measured the cpu temperature. All results were obtained with a roomtemperature of 22 degrees celcius and a case temperature of 30 degrees celcius. No case cooling was used except for the powersupply fan.

As the testing shows, the Alpha managed to outperform the generic heatsink by an amazing 10 degrees celcius! Those 10 degrees can make the difference between a stable and an unstable system, and even if your cpu is stable with the generic heatsink, it is always a good thing to cool your prescious processor.

Conclusion

For me the Alpha PAL6035 is a definate winner. The heatsink performs very well, as it was able to cool my Duron 7 degrees cooler then the generic one I was using before. If you are looking for a good cooler for a decent price, then the PAL6035 is what you need!

Good

- Performance

- Design

- Comes with fan, fanguard and thermal paste

Bad

- A bit pricy