Lower Cooling Requirements

When we speak about power requirements, we should also have a look at cooling requirements. The images on this page compare the standard Intel boxed cooler that comes with a Pentium D or Pentium Extreme Edition processor, to the little heat sink that AOpen bundles with its i975Xa-YDG motherboard. The Intel part is designed to cope with as much as 130 W, and carries thin fins as well as a copper core. The AOpen unit, on the other side (left), simply uses a regular aluminum heat sink. Again, it is not difficult to imagine that here is another cost benefit for the low power platform - unless you intend to overclock it.