Come and git it!
A
very popular cooling choice is the Global Win CPM-32 heatsink fan combo. Selling
sans chip for around $14-17, this won’t exactly break the bank, so what’s
so special about it? What catches my eye at first glance is its height. At
more than two inches tall, you need to worry about this rig hitting your power
supply. Some cases, like the InWin
A500 mid tower ATX or any other case
with the supply mounted sideways instead of horizontally, may present an incompatibility.
Be careful in choosing the right box for your tall combo.
Height
aside, the quality of this little hummer is astounding. Being used to AAVID socket-7
heatsink fans; the CPM-32 will simply blow you away without blowing your funds
away with it. Drawing 2.16 watts, the CPM-32 has more fins than the CPM-16 and
therefore has more suction (or blowing) effect. Rated at 4200 RPM, the 3-pin wired
fan actually spins at more like 4700 RPM at 12.1 volts in my system. This adds
up to a whopping 26.0 cubic feet per minute (CFM) of air flow—and you hear every
foot of it. The loudness isn’t really obnoxious, but if you’re one of those audio/video
editors that needs quiet, you may have to don headphones or crank your speakers
up to lease breaking levels.
Does
It Work?
Why pay exuberant prices for 550 MHz when a low
cost 366 MHz system can get you nearly the same performance? The next most
important factor (question) is where to locate these combos. Since the production
of Celeron 366’s ceased in December, the supply is quickly drying up, but
there are a few companies that still stock them—a lot of them. Enough to ship
out between 20-40 combos per day until further notice. I am referring to a
fairly new, scrappy company by the name of…get ready for it…the suspense is
just killing you…Advanced
Design Of Kentucky. My last surfing escapade
told me that these guys had the 366/CPM-32/BM6 combo’s for only $199 plus
shipping. Shipping is the best part. You know how so many other firms are
suckerin’ you into a "great" price then leave you with plainly high
shipping charges? Well, Advanced
Design Of Kentucky doesn’t do that. UPS
ground in the contiguous 48 states runs about nine 9$. Pre-tested and guaranteed
for a year, they hand pick each chip and run your combo for a couple of days
just to make sure 550 isn’t a problem.
I
Want Numbers
While each combo will
achieve different levels of stability at speeds higher than the guaranteed 550,
I thought I would post my results accumulated over the last three weeks. When
I spec out a Vcore (core voltage), this is the minimum, not maximum required
to keep the rig stable. An N/A designation means a no go at any voltage.
DOS
Results (Booting Into DOS 6.22 And Running Cache Check 7)
| FSB
(MHz) | Speed
(MHz) | Vcore
(Volts) | Chip
Temp (F) | Case
Temp (F) |
| 100 |
550 |
2.0 |
80 |
75 |
|
105 |
578 |
2.0 |
82 |
75 |
|
110 |
605 |
2.1 |
84 |
75 |
|
112 |
616 |
2.2 |
86 |
75 |
Why
did I bother with DOS tests? I have a theory. The theory goes that if you quickly
do the DOS tests and subtract about 10% from the maximum speed attainable (using
default voltage, in this case 2.0 volts), you end up with a realistic Windows
figure. In my example, the highest DOS speed was 616 MHz. Shaving off 10% gives
554 MHz. Check out my Win98SE table.
Windows
98SE Results (Booting Into Win98SE And Running 3D Everything)
| FSB
(MHz) | Speed
(MHz) | Vcore
(Volts) | Chip
Temp (F) | Case
Temp (F) |
| 100 |
550 |
2.0 |
95 |
91 |
|
103 |
566 |
2.1 |
96 |
92 |
|
105 |
578 |
2.2 |
97 |
93 |
|
110 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
So
far my theory works. 550 MHz is stable for over three hours playing Q2/Q3, Unreal,
Half-Life or whatever you want. No crashes whatsoever. And, the combo achieves
this wonderful stability at default voltage. Notice that running Windows is much
harder than booting to DOS. While I could zip along easily past the 600 MHz mark,
Win98SE was only stable at speeds of 578 or less no matter how much juice I feed
it—not too shabby though. My sample 366 can easily sustain a 200 MHz boost all
day long and I didn’t pay 566 prices. For that matter, the Celeron 566 isn’t even
out, only the 533 is.
Final Words
For
$199 plus shipping, you get a great, low coast package from Advanced
Designs Of Kentucky. While your specific
results may vary slightly, they do stand behind their promise of a solid 550 MHz
from a 366 chip. Great for gaming setups or just plain browsing the web, add a
128MB stick of RAM and you have a very hard to beat system.
