Alpha PAL 8150 Athlon64FX/64 Cooler: CPU coolers for the hardcore user - Part 2
Manufactured by: Provided By: Alpha
Price :
Reviewed by:
Date : March 21st 2004

The Cooler in Detail

The PAL 8150T is undoubtedly one of the biggest coolers I have come across. It's simply massive with measurements of 105mm long and 79mm wide. The cooler weighs just over 700grams, so you guessed right, it's considerably heavy too.

The PAL 8150T is made out of Aluminum which has a copper core built into it. Due to the sheer size of this cooler, it has plenty of surface area for heat to spread around, and there are a few hundred pins jutting out of the cooler for faster heat dissipation.

Installation of the PAL 8150T was pretty straight forward. The cooler is fitted to the board through the mounting holes provided in your motherboard. The PAL 8150T uses a standard AMD baseplate that fits under the motherboard so that the cooler can be attached to it without the need for un-installing the mainboard. The spring nuts provided to tighten the Cooler to the motherboard have been designed so that you cannot over tighten them, preventing any damage that can be caused due to over tightening these nuts.

Tests

Our test system consisted of the following

Performance

For testing we ran Folding@ home for 30 mins on full load. Tests were run 3 times and the average temperatures have been recorded. Alpha provided us with two fans, the M81 which is an 80 x 80 x 25.4 fan producing around 46CFM and the M82 which is an 80 x 80 x 15mm fan producing around 20CFM. Both these fans provide mediocre performance, however you'll have to opt for an after market high performance fan if you need the PAL 8150 to perform better. For testing purposes we opted for a high performance Delta fan producing around 75CFM.

Looking at the results we can clearly see that the PAL 8150 is a great performer. We compared the PAL 8150 to the SLK 948U simply because the latter is currently considered one of the best performing coolers. As you can see, the PAL 8150T is able to match the performance of the SLK 948U. We carried out the tests with the fans sucking air out of the cooler rather than it blowing into them as Alpha has advised. However we tried out the conventional way of directing air straight into the cooler. The results were pretty much the same as what we received above, but there was a lot more noise been produced.

Conclusion

The Alpha PAL 8150 is certainly a high performer. My good experience with Alpha continues to grow as I have never been disappointed in the past with their coolers, and the PAL 8150 certainly plays its part. It has solid workman ship, installs quite easily and offers great performance; the three ideal characteristics one would look for in a cooler. The PAL 8150 retails for around US$38, so it doesn't require you to break a bank either. So if you're currently looking out for a good performing Athlon64FX/64 cooler, the PAL 8150 won't disappoint.

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