A Cool Bunch: How To Put A Lid On The Die Temperature Of Your Athlon

Easy Upgrading : Taisol CGK760092 And CGK760092B

If you want to turn a good standard fan into an "overclocker-compatible" product, you may simply need a stronger fan.

Take Taisol's CGK760092, for example. The standard version CGK760092 (with a low-profile Delta fan on the aluminum heat sink), which comes recommended by AMD, provides good services.

Good cooling performance: Taisol CGK760092.

Our tests showed that an Athlon XP 2000+ feels right at home under this cooler; AMD would even put the 2100+ beneath it.

The 80 x 60 x 7 millimeter base plate features a copper inlay in order to faster dissipate the heat.

Though its underside is smooth, it's far from perfect. Six rows of twenty cooling ribs each are strung together on the top. Each rib measures forty by one millimeters.

In the "B version," the low-profile fan is replaced by a high-performance fan revolving at 6,500 rpm. That raises the cooling capacity to the level of a Dragon Orb3, easily providing the user with quite a powerful CPU cooling system. An unpleasant side effect is that the operating noise of the cooler nearly doubles (59 dB(A)) with this upgrade.

The power option: the CGK760092B with a stronger fan.

Noise pays off - the cooling performance of the B version is higher.

What's special about the CGK760092 is that its heat sink was not extruded as it is with other manufacturers - it was forged. The advantages of forging: higher density of the material and, consequently, better heat conductivity.