Coolers for Pentium 4 `2002 Q3
Introduction
Recently we reviewed several coolers for the AMD Athlon processor. Now it's time we took a look at the cooling devices of the opposite party.
It is accepted that Intel Pentium4 processors do not pump out heat that much and do not require special cooling devices - the cooler that comes with the company's BOX option suffices. Indeed, with the vast variety of coolers for AMD processors the list of coolers for Intel counterparts looks scarce.Therefore it doesn't take much to review practically all the popular makes.
To pick up the coolers, we popped about all the near computer shops and lucked out to get 4 aluminum coolers and 2 copper ones. A bit short of this, moreover, the copper ones, as the shop-assistants said, were completely out of demand. Any other coolers but for those in the BOX make neither can boast consumers' popularity. What's up? Pentium 4 is about the same in theoretical heat emission as Athlon XP. Let's sort this out in detail.
First off, there are Pentium4's based on the old Willamette core and on the 0.18 mk process technology as well as new Pentium4's based on the Northwood core (0.13 mk). The difference in heat emission between the two cores is rather big: the Willamette running at 2 GHz pumps out over 70 watts of heat, while theNorthwood-basedprocessor emits merely ~50 watts. The latter has much more transistors (512k cache size vs. 256k for the Willamette) and runs at much higher clock speeds.
Even the 50 watt is too much. Meanwhile, you can come across some messages online saying that Pentium4 stays operable even with no cooler at all.As a proof, they brought in that famous video clip showing a system running Quake 3 with the cooler removed. Pentium4's, Pentium3's and a couple of Athlon's were run through such tortures successively. The Athlons burnt down completely, the Pentium3 hanged, but the Pentium4 survived and was still running.
The secret of the Pentium4 is very easy to reveal - a quick look at the processor is enough.
The processor core is shielded with the so-called IHS (stands for 'Integrated Heat Spreader'), a copper plate several millimeters in thickness. The copper plate is nickel-coated. Such design has several advantages. First, local overheats are prevented, since some processor blocks are heavily loaded (e.g. some blocks run at a doubled clock speed). Heat emission of such block is rather high and could have resulted in a failure of the whole processor. The copper plate prevents this through distributing heat all over the surface.
The second advantage is that the area of the copper plate is twice as great of the core and thus does the same as the copper base on coolers in AMD processors.
Finally, the copper plate does the protection job - it preserves the delicate processor core from various damages (e.g. core chipping while installing the cooler).
However, a question is still there:"if we remove the radiator completely, would the copper plate of only 2 mm in thickness be able to pump out heat from the running processor?". Definitely not. The thing is that in such a critical condition the protective mechanism of Pentium4 comes into play. The outcome is evident - the processor performance drops sharply. How exactly does that occur? There are various opinions on that. Some say that the processor clock speed decreases as a result of the multiplier inner changes. Others assert some cycles are missing. In any case that doesn't matter much (for more details, browse the Internet if you are curious about that) - most importantly, under any cooling the processor stays operative.
By the way, you can see in that movie how the protective mechanism works. Note that in the frames per second reading is displayed in the corner of the screen. After the cooler was removed, the figure dropped from 200 to 25 frames.
On completing the tests I decided to do my own research of that process. I didn't go too far - I simply switched off the cooler fan. Then I observed the temperature rise and from time to time took the Sandra scores. As soon as the temperature reached 80 C, the following results were produced:
so I thought it would be reasonable to stop the experiments.
That mechanism of thermal protection has its own drawbacks. Suppose you assembled a Pentium4 1.6A system and set the bus speed to 133 MHz. In most cases the system will run absolutely trouble-free. But interesting begins afterwards!As we set the speed to 150 MHz, the system failed; we pushed the voltage from standard 1.5V (supposedly) up to 1.65V and the system is back on track, running smoothly. Why not to overclock it more? And we install a bus whose speed is over 150 MHz, raise the voltage to 1.75V and higher - all is running OK. We seemed to have finally arrived at the overclocker's paradise - the processor temperature in the Windows OS did not exceed 50-55 C, the clock speed boost was as high as 1000 MHz, and the performance boost in the tests was adequate to the clock speed boost (~20%). But interesting occurs afterwards - you start a 3D game and in about couple of hours fragging monsters you end up noticing (if lucky) that the game speed is going down.
In fact, I brought in the ideal example - reality is rich in more varied options. In every specific case numerous factors matter, starting with the choice of thermopastes (by the way, it is one more review of ours ), current voltage Vcore up to the processor stepping. The main conclusion can be formulated like this - a high-powered cooler is needed for substantial overclocking. Therefore, we arrived at the thought that copper coolers are anyway necessary for cooling Pentium4 processors.
The last what I wanted to say in the theory section is this: you'll never come across processor overheat in the Windows OS while running software which is not hungry for resources (office programs, Internet applications). It means - when not loaded, a Pentium4 system switches the processor to the low power consumption mode, which results in the temperature drop (while writing this text on my PC, the temperature of the Pentium4 1.8A-> 2.4B x 1.65V is not higher than 42 C).
Most interesting is that Athlon XP practically never switches to the standby mode. Even if there are no active tasks running, it is working at its full power emitting lots of heat. To activate the standby mode, some software like VCool or a combination of Wpcredit + Wpcrset is needed. They enable the chipset's function which disconnects the processor from the system bus.
So that all the above did not look like criticism towards AMD, let me demonstrate that at the full load Intel processors heat up no less than their competitors. For that, I compared the maximum operating temperatures of the following processors:Athlon XP 1600+ and Pentium4 1.8A
coupled with a TT Volcano 7+ cooler
Therefore, we found out that cooling Pentium4 processors is as important a task as for AMD processors. But with one reservation in mind - I mean the processor will be overclocked, since the standard cooler with the standard thermal interface is more than enough for the processor if it is running at its rated clock speed. On the other hand, Pentium4 clock speeds keep rising (by the end of the year 2.8 GHz or even 3 GHz processors will be launched). Our research is going to be quite topical, since use of such powerful processors implies immense heat emission. Mind you, nobody is willing to pay a lot for the fastest (and thus most expensive) processor which ends up losing its performance because of the inadequate cooling or a weak cooler (costing no more than $10) :)
A couple of words on the measurement procedure. As is the case with the recent review ("A Roundup of Noiseless Coolers for the SocketA"), I will rank the most subjective parameters with scores, i.e. the higher the score, the better that parameter is. The subjective parameters are first the cooler's noise level, ease of installation and further removal.
But the prices and temperatures of the processor are precise enough and will be given in figures. The processor temperatures and fans' rotational speeds were measured with Motherboard Monitor v5.1.9.1. The test setupwas assembled in an Inwin S506 case with the cover removed (for a better perception of the noise :). If the cooler had related thermal interface, then the latter was removed and further measurements were carried out with the silicon-organic paste KPT-8 (the cheapest of all the tested). The processor was heated up using CPUBurn, with Pentium4 1.8A used as the tested processor (all Pentium4 processors have thermal sensors integrated in the core). For increased heat emission we set its bus speed to 133 MHz (which totally gave 2.4 GHz) and raised the voltage Vcore up to 1.65V.
While describing the cooler I'll draw your attention to the fastening convenience. Also don't forget about such factors as the fastening reliability, radiator's dimensions, material, appearance, processing quality etc. Most of these are fairly subjective (especially, the appearance :), so I'll try to be as impartial as possible through presenting more illustrations.
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