3.33 GHz Remains Stable At Standard Voltage Levels, Continued

The cooling performance of the box cooler is barely adequate. The system starts up trouble-free at 3.33 GHz, and our overclocking causes power consumption in idle mode to climb by about 6 watts. If the CPU is heavily loaded for some time, however, the system inevitably crashes because of overheating. The cause of this turns out to be the way in which the fan is controlled - it was designed by Intel to emit only a small amount of noise while active, but because of overclocking, power consumption levels climb by 24 W and the cooler gets into trouble. The controller can't react properly to this jump in energy consumption and the fan can't increase its speed fast enough to keep the CPU from overheating. It's also no help that your only options in the BIOS are to control the fan by PWM or voltage levels, or turn it off altogether.

The box cooler only works when this CPU is run at its standard clock rate. It's not designed for overclocking use.

After abandoning the Intel box cooler, we chose a Zalman model instead. We recommend the CNPS9500, one of the best coolers available on the market today.

The Zalman CNPS9500 has no difficulty handling heat levels at a CPU clock rate of 3.33 GHz.