10-Way P4 Cooler Roundup

If you own a Socket 478 Pentium 4, you may have already noticed that the cooler you got with the CPU is barely audible - even more so if you made the transition from an AMD based system. The main reason behind this is because nearly all P4 coolers work a whole lot better than most of their Socket A counterparts, simply because their bigger, and capable of tackling larger fans that can push more cubic feet of air per minute through a larger array of fins on the heatsink. The surface temperature of the P4 may very well get just as hot as the AMD processors, but the heatsinks efficiency is improved by a larger contact patch on the P4 as opposed to the tiny 10x10mm patch on the XP. The Intel Pentium 4 also features an inbuilt speed-throttling device that will slow the overall speed down a notch to help it cool. Common logic would suggest that if the CPU was cool all of the time, then the CPU would run at full speed all of the time. Introducing the after-market cooler. After-market Socket 478 coolers have been available in a wide range of shapes, sizes and colours for some time now, and their performance as well as noise levels vary from unit to unit.