Intel's Xeon Shows Its Stuff in 7 Motherboards

Nocona Platform Features

Cooler Installation Is Simple Now

The CPU coolers are no longer mounted on the motherboard, but are screwed into a back plate on the chassis.

Here you can see the holes that are required for mounting the coolers properly.

The CPU coolers need to be clearly larger now, but do without the inconvenient retention mechanism. Instead of that, the heat sinks are directly attached to a back plate of the chassis, using holes in the motherboard. Now, it's barely possible to damage the motherboard during heat sink installation any more.

The fan header now has four pins and offers temperature based control.

The four-pin fan header finally allows for measuring the CPU temperature. Hence, the fan speed can be adjusted ideally in order to widely reduce unnecessary noise.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.