HeatSink Advice

If you plan on keeping the cpu for awhile, I'd go with the retail heatsink with 3 year warranty. I use a zalman "fan mate 1" to reduce fan speed. Works great as long as you're not overclocking. Running my p4 at 1700-2100 rpm, depending on the season. Costs only $5-7.

The retail HSF is fine as long as you are able to supply it with plenty of fresh ambient air (cut a blowhole over the HSF or use redirect the air from an existing fan mount).

Unassisted HSFs (even good ones) are not very good at displacing the warm air from around the heatsink. They flush the hot air from the heatsink/cpu, but they are not very good at getting rid of it. Unless you use a monster fan, you will just end recycling a pocket of warm air through the HSF. Displacing the warm pocket with fresh air will make the HSF much more efficient.

Gor for a ASUS nForce 2 A7N8X Deluxe and a AXP 2400+ and some good PC-3200 DDR CL2 Ram......

Also buy the chip retail.....gives u 3 yr. warranty......as far as using a 3rd party HSF on a retail CPU yes u void ur 3 yr. warranty BUT AMD would never know what HSF u used.....as all they ask u when u RMA is the # on the silver sticker on the HSF so just keep the retail fan so u can know the # and thats that........

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=13597" target="_new">-MeTaL RoCkEr</A>