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AMD Aircooling Round-Up of 2003
JMke writes: "If you want a silent AMD system you almost always have to get yourself a higher-class heatsink. Thermalright and other manufactures have brought out updated products that can keep your CPU cool while keeping the noise down, hardware geek site Madshrimps has published a roundup of the best heatsinks from 2003 that money can buy in 2004, read it here."
The CPU fan is both more important and, generally, quieter than the power supply. It seems quite an unreasonable risk to jeopardize your CPU for a few extra decibels when there are easier, safer ways to quiet down a system.
Usually something as simple as moving the case can make a significant difference.
Zalman 7000-Cu!!!
Best Heatsink I've ever owned. Solid, and frosty.
So I guess we are testing the heatsinks right now, as we pound the shineola out of their webservers?
Friends don't let friends post.
/tongue-in-cheek
After hearing of many AMD processors popping louder than a lobster in a vat of boiling water, I considered a little liquid cooling to keep my rig from becoming an expensive piece of sand...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
This reminds me of the time a couple months ago that I upgraded my heatsink, and for whatever reason absentmindedly left my old copper block on my toaster oven. Weeks later I noticed the toaster was not working quite as well as it used to, and I realized the heatsink was to blame!
Then I realized that the toaster was just fucked up and that I was just an idiot.
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
I've been stuck with a really noisy AMD system as my desktop for the last 6 months or so... It's sufficiently bad that I have to shut 2 doors between the workroom and the bedroom (not the room doors, ones in-between) so it can't be heard at night...
....
I kept telling myself to get a new chip/fan/mboard, but I've been waiting for the 64-bit ones to come out (not because they're 64-bit, but because they're simply faster and better designed). Now at last, I can reduce the noise-level, at least once I've sent in and paid my tax return
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
One thing I found to help keep it quite is to actually clean the dust off the fan blades.
It runs almost completely silent and keeps things impressively cool. Didn't have to buy special thermal grease, either. It's also compatible with Pentium 4's and the Athlon 64. It really is teh uber, and comes with a free fanmate to manually adjust fan speed. However, it is huge and doesn't fit on all motherboards, so buyer beware.
I'm using the AMD supplied fan/HS on my XP2600/333 and it's louder then the PS fan, or any other fans for that matter. There was something useful on a review site some time back, where they reviewed the individual fans. Once you found a sink you liked you could usually go quieter with an Oryx or somesuch fan. That info would be welcome. Which fans are quietest, without sacrificing CFM/RPM.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
:edit: Site appears to be slowing/not responding :/edit:
:
Conclusion
Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of the reviewed products
Swiftech MCX462-V
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Plug&Play installation
Easy attachment of both 80&90mm fans
Top end performance in both silent as loud categories
CON
Higher price
The MCX462-V is a true engineering beauty, combining functionality with top performance, the helicoid pin layout allows for very low noise production when using different types of fans. The full copper block provides excellent thermal conduction making overclocking possible even with very silent fans!
Thermalright SP-97
(Provided by: Thermalright)
PRO
1st class performance in all categories
Secure installation
Efficiency increases with the CPU overclock thanks to the heat pipes
CON
Installation requires motherboard removal
The successful formula from the SP-94 Intel heatsink has been brought over to the AMD side of town, and the performance is stunting, providing excellent results no matter what fan is used, it edges out the competition by a comfortable margin!
Thermalright SLK947-U
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Good overall performance
Secure installation
Competitively priced
CON
Installation requires motherboard removal
The "older" SLK947-U still delivers very respectable results, although its performance has been surpassed by the SP-97, it manages to provide the best performance/price ratio in this roundup. If you are on a budget but still want top end air-cooling for your AMD setup then look no further then the latest SLK from Thermalright!
Scythe Kamakaze
(Provided by: Bacata)
PRO
Includes a Fan + Rheobus
Decent performance
CON
Installation method far from perfect on all motherboards
I had a lot of installation issues with this heatsink but that was due to the socket/capacitor layout used by the board on which we did the test. The performance is average, edging out the old PAL8045 by a very small margin.
Evercool MAG-01 & CUF-715CA
(Provided by: Evercool)
PRO
Very easy installation
Decent performance
Silent 70mm fan included
Very competitively priced
CON
Not "strong" enough for overclocking your AMD
Both Evercool heatsink proved to be worthy replacements for the Stock AMD cooler, providing better cooling at lower noise levels while being priced at only ~20! My preference goes out to the MAG-01 as it can be installed on almost all popular Sockets out there from Intel & AMD. The copper/alu mix does have an impact on the performance when compared to the full copper CUF-715CA, but the difference is minimal.
Dan's Data has amazing heat sink reviews. Dan tests each heat sink with a heater simulating the Pentium or Athlon CPU. He publishes the R-theta values for each sink tested and has a very straightforward scientific view of the whole process.
1. Post early
2. Make sure at least one word is on topic
3. ???
4. Profit!
Anyway, in response to the AC - the article was supposedly about heatsinks, not CPU fans. Although some heatsinks come with a fan permanently attached, the better ones let you pick your own fan.
OTOH, this is said without having RTFA so YMMV and IANAL.
I vote the Coolermaster Aero 7 as my top cooler pick of 2003. It's cheap (under $20), and keeps my XP2000+ 10-15 celcius cooler than the stock heatsink did. I've also read of many people overclocking 2500+ Bartons to 3200+ levels, and the Aero 7 keeps it cool. The best part is you can adjust the cooling at any time, with the dial you can put in any 3.5" bay. I keep mine really low, but if I needed mega cooling, just turn it up (although on max cooling it's loud!) It uses a really weird fan, and I think that might be the secret of its success. Instead of the usual 'sucks from above, blows downwards' type thing, it spins on the same plane as the motherboard, meaning it sucks in air from both sides, and blows it all down. So you get far more air throughput. This means you can turn the RPMs down, and I can cool my overclocked XP2000+ with the fan running at 1600RPM! My old AMD stock cooler was almost 3000RPM, and far noisier. If anyone wants to get one, get the cheaper aluminium one. It actually cools better than the copper one! Why? Because it's a lot bigger than the copper one.. so make sure you have the room ;-) Anyway, a bargain. I hope they come out with one for the 64's.
Then just turn down the fans in your PSU, and you have near silent cooling up to a decent speed :-)
The CPU fan is both more important and, generally, quieter than the power supply.
Not in my experience, usually the CPU fans are 60mm and higher RPM, whereas the power supply is generally larger with a slower RPM. To the first order RPM == noise...
These days there isn't much jeopardy to run a couple degrees hotter for several dB quieter operation. I know that Intel CPUs will throttle down if they get dangerously hot. Frankly I'd rather save my hearing and sanity than the CPU anyway.
One additional annoyance is that most motherboard manufacturers go to the added length of putting unnecessary fans on the board chipset as well. These tend to be small (40mm) and run at stupidly high speeds (6000+ RPM) given the amount of power dissipation they need to counter.
One system I have, a shuttle XPC, doubles up the task of case fan and CPU cooler. I pulled the fan off the board chipset, and also the graphics card (replaced the graphics one with a Zalman passive), pulled the 80mm 5000 RPM Sunon dustbuster fan off the CPU heatsink and replaced it with a 2500 RPM much quieter fan. Now it runs with a total of two fans, CPU and PS, much quieter even at full load. How is this possible without having the thing cook itself ?? simple by underclocking - running the FSB at 190MHz instead of 200MHz. Performance difference is incremental and it runs stable at full load (and its much much quieter).
I will have to disagree here. I have spend a good amount of effort trying to quite down the tree systems I have in my small 'office' at home.
By far the loudest thing in the cases are the CPU fans and I don't even have 'quite' power supplies. I've started the ran the system for 10 seconds or so with the CPU fan unplugged. I have bought 3 or 4 Athlon CPU fans which were supposed to be quiet but I haven't been happy with any of them.
My wife but a new Shuttle XPC and those are damn silent. My next system will be the Athlon64 Shuttle XPC.
Well my work desktop runs at around 60 decibels from ~2 feet away. Yes, that's loud. And it's an Intel P3 system from IBM. I want a new desktop PC purely because it's so damn loud... I don't actually need more CPU, memory, or disk.
My home PCs are all AMD, all with the stock fan/hs. The stock AMD fan/hs isn't incredibly noisy, but it certainly isn't the quietest thing out there. The loudest system is really quite bad -- but it's because of a very loud PS fan and several case fans. I'll eventually take some steps to quiet it down, because it is ungodly loud (at least to me).
If you really want to reduce system noise, then check out Silent PC Review. They do some real testing of sound levels and give some pretty solid advice on how to quiet PCs.
Every time i apply thermal grease to a new heatsink, it absorbs fairly rapidly into my skin.
:-)
If you believe the Arctic Silver instructions, you shouldn't do this - not because of your health, but because oil from your skin could degrade heat conductivity.
I put a little glop down then spread it paper-thin with the edge of a plastic card.
Of course I've found that good thermal grease matters much less than cleaning the lint out of your heatsink.
Indeed. I've found that my PC runs quiet and stable when I clean it every month or two. I just take the tower out the back door, open the case and use either a hair dryer or reversible vacuum to blow out the excess dust. (nothing too powerful, just a large stream of directed air.) Takes every bit of five minutes of downtime, then it's back up and running, usually a degree or 2 cooler than before. I think the key is don't let it get to the point where you have to physically scrape the crud off the fan blades with a Qtip or something. Preventative maintenance is best.
Can anyone explain why thermoelectic coolers (Peltier coolers) are not the standard accessory to any cooling kit?
My guess is current draw.
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
I also remove the sheetmetal plates that block off unused slots, and try to use only every other slot.. That lets air blow out in between the expansion cards, preventing a dead air zone.
I use only one 7 inch or 4 inch AC case fan (in a hole cut right thru the face of the case, with a guard on it made out of hardware cloth) at low speed to blow air into the case (I reduce the speed with a small AC capacitor (like used for AC motor running) in series with the AC fan). I blow the air into the case, not draw it out, because I don't want to fight against the powersupply fan.
If you have a lot of fans, the tone from each fan can work together to create what is called a beat frequency, like the complex tones you get if you pluck two or more guitar strings at the same time.
You know that forest people keep talking about where there's nobody around to hear things? I put my computer cases there, and now they don't make any sound at all.
(Unfortunately, one my systems did get destroyed when a tree fell on it.)
I like this site because it reviews all kinds of PC silencing stuff, not just heatsinks/fans. Seems to be modeled on the popular www.storagereview.com site.
Has reviews of...
DIY Systems
Prebuilt Systems
Cases & Damping
Power Supplies
Cooling
Fans & Controls
Storage
I use Aerocool Deep Impacts on my Dual 2400+ on a Tyan s2460.
:)
Very quiet. It is heatexchanger/heatsink. Very neat. I can no longer hear my workstation from 3 floors up.
There is a good review on www.viperlair.com
Cheers.
If you are concerned about noise, and still want a good heatsink, get a Zalman.
I have the new copper flower, which has ~400 fins on it. And a 92mm fan sitting in between them...at max rpm's it is 25dbs. And it keeps my 2500+ oc'ed to 3000+ under control easily.
It weighs about 2 lbs, and instead of hooking into the socket, it has mounts that screw directly into the motherboard.
Another plus side, it comes with a free controller that can take the fan down to 21bs.
That paired with 4 vantec stealth fans, and a zalman 400 watt PSU, and a DigiDoc 5+ fan controller, the only thing I can hear running most of the time is the CPU Fan, and that barely, and then the subdued whine of my 9800 Pro AIW fan...which I don't want to replace for warranty reasons yet...
GeekWares - Buy and Download Today!
Well, three really.
I wanted a very quiet PC. I bought a huge, solid, steel case, customized with a 120mm fan on the back (theory: big and slow == quiet). I got a Zalman "flower" heatsink/fan (HSF), and mounted the big Zalman fan to blow over it. I got an Enermax power supply with a speed adjustment. It's pretty quiet; I hear a fan, but I think that's the GeForce 4 card's fan.
I wanted to make a quiet PC for my wife. I bought a Lian Li aluminum case, an Arctic Cooling HSF, and a similar Enermax power supply. No fancy 120mm fan on the back, just a standard 80mm fan, but I used a very quiet one with thermostatic control so it is very slow and quiet when the system is cool. This computer, as it turns out, is almost completely silent! Much quieter than my computer. I did use a GeForce4 MX board in her system, because it has just a passive heat sink (no cooling fan), so perhaps that explains it.
I loved working with the Lian Li case. It's a PC-60 model with USB. I also much preferred the Arctic Cooling HSF. I got my Arctic Cooling HSF form SVC.com:
http://svc.com/arcoolsupsil.html
P.S. About the quiet power supply: I got a 365 Watt power supply with two cooling fans, one with a speed control and one with a thermal control (automatically runs faster when hot). This power supply has "Active PFC", which I don't completely understand, but I gather it is a more efficient way to convert AC to DC and thus makes less waste heat. It has a 3-pin jumper to attach to the motherboard, so the motherboard can monitor the speed of the power supply's main fan, and also so that the motherboard can signal to the power supply that it wants all fans powered down for sleep mode. (I don't think either computer is ever really sleeping at the moment. I ought to play around with ACPI and get that working, but they are quiet enough that it hasn't been a priority.) I ordered the power supplies from Directron. This one isn't the exact same model but it has the same features:
http://www.directron.com/eg465axve.html
P.S. Why is it really a tale of three Athlon XPs? Because I crunched one trying to put on the HSF. With an Athlon XP, be very, very careful when putting on the HSF. You can make a very expensive mistake! I'm looking forward to Athlon64 and Opteron with a heat spreader protecting the chip.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I replaced my PS, blindly assuming that it was the source of the extremely loud fan noise on a 1.4Ghz Athlon system. There was almost no change, so I tried the machine with the case off, and determined that the CPU fan was loud. I replaced it with a Thermaltake, and immediately noticed a huge drop in noise.
Google cache does it. Why not slashdot? Sites that don't want the mirror could have a tag to disallow it and suffer slashdotting instead.
Usually something as simple as moving the case can make a significant difference.
It can make a difference in cooling as well.
Last month, while I was visiting a cousin upstate for the holidays, I asked if I could use his computer to check work email. While I was using it, he told me that he had to send it back to Dell twice in 3 months (he had only had it since July) due to a total failure to do anything upon powerup. He then started to go into a rant about how Dell sucks (he does that about every company that fails to meet his ridiculous level of expectations - while I was there, he refused the five large pizzas we ordered one night because the driver forgot the pizza sauce for the breadsticks.)
Anyway, I replied that I had no clue what he was talking about as I had 2 Dells myself and the entire environment at work was Dell and I had never heard of such accusations of bad service and poor quality. He stated that Dell "lied" that the computer was overheating and suggested he may have it in a bad location. I looked at where it was sitting - didn't seem so bad to me, under the desk by a window. Then the furnace kicked on. In between the wall and the computer was a vent for the furnace. He had it there to keep his feet toasty while he was using the computer. I knew my cousin was dumb, but I didn't know he was that stupid.
I felt like taking the computer into protective custody. I don't care if it's an emachines, at least give it a chance to work right before you abuse it.
I put this in two weeks ago. Thermaltake Silent Boost For under $30 (including shipping) it cools an Athlon XP at about 21 decibals. Very nice. Not 100% silent, but very very quiet for the price.
I also remove the sheetmetal plates that block off unused slots..
While removing the expansion plates may allow more airflow, it can also (potentially) let vermin into your computer case. A former coworker's home computer stopped working, when he opened it he found a family of mice had nested in there and chewed the cables. :)
A couple cats solve this potential problem quite nicely, and are fairly quiet.
Thanks for posting that...I'm afraid he was /.'d way before I got to the site.
I'm going to agree that the Thermalright SP-97 is the best air cooled heatsink out right now...for overclocking or silent pc operation. If you want to go extreme overclocking, toss some ridiculously loud/high CFM fan on there...for silent PC run a slower RPM, quieter fan. Either way this heatsink will do its job.
I just upgraded from an XP 2800+ that I bought last December to an XP 2500+ Barton...I took the Barton and changed the FSB from 333mhz to 400mhz...resulting in a 3200+ Barton (very common thing right now). With the retail heatsink/fan combo the diode (core CPU) temperature would max at around 60 c. It was rock solid (24 hours of distributed.net running in the background with BF1942 w/ 63 AI players and myself with 1600x1200 resolution to generate as much video card heat as possible...even with my guy just sitting at the spawn), but the 60 c temperature made me nervous.
I ordered one of the new Thermalright SP-97 and tossed it on there with the Tornado 92mm high RPM fans...the max temperature (even in a warm room) dropped to 44 c. Unfortunately the sound of that fan was just too much for me. I pulled it off and put my old 80mm fan (still a really good fan...65 CFM or so as opposed to the 119 CFM of the Tornado) on instead. It still maxes out to 44 c. I've been meaning to push the FSB higher, to see exactly how far I can go, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
The Thermalright SP-97 is the best heatsink I've ever used (keep in mind that you have the have a P4 CPU mount style motherboard as it doesn't have the CPU socket clips...and if it did you probably wouldn't want to use them, as this is a pretty hefty unit).
You must have got lucky...my two cats tend to make more noise than our server room.
Still...I like the idea...might have to give it a try, seeing how I can never find extra slot-covers anyway!
First off, I'm not an overclocker.
I've built 4 systems in the last two years, all configured with the factory heatsink with the fan removed, Antec TruePower power supplies (300 to 500 watts) with the Antec fans, and a single Vantec Stealth 80mm fan exhausting out the back of the case. Round cables throughout. Good quality cases, somewhat oversized.
All these systems' CPUs would overheat with the fanless heatsinks, until I did one simple thing to each of them:
Suspend a 120mm Vantec Stealth about two inches over the factory aluminum heatsink, offcenter, blowing right down into the heatsink blades. The 80mm case exhaust fan sits right next to the CPU in each case. No extra holes in the case.
A Pentium III 933Mhz system running Devil Linux (my firewall) previously ran at 110F to 120F, now runs at 77F. Just now, I stopped the 120mm fan, and CPU temperature climbs 2F every five seconds, until it stabilizes at 113F. Restarting the fan produces a similarly fast drop in temperature.
My Pentium 4 systems, including one that has a substantial in-the-cabinet raid array, all run between 85F and 98F CPU temp. I don't even want to think about what they'd do without that 120mm fan blowing on them.
Low speed, large volume is *quiet* and *cool*.
Excepting the large raid array laden system, not one of these machines can be heard from 5 feet away.
People are overthinking cooling.
Peace. Quiet. Cheap. Cool.
Aaaaahhhhhhhh!
They could cache the site, but initally point the links to the real site. When the site realizes they're flooded and sees all the slashdot.org referrals, they can phone in to slashdot and say "hey, could you turn on your cached version?" This way, the caching is only done when requested by the site and there are no permission problems.
In any event, it benefits nobody for there to be articles posted that can't be read. Not slashdot, not the readers, not the site, not the site's advertisers. I do wish they'd pick SOME sort of solution for this.
There's half a dozen options available with just a minute's thought about it:
1. Cache like google. Remove when asked.
2. Cache, but don't use cache unless asked by site.
3. Wait to post article until permission to cache is granted by tiny web site.
4. Post article without tiny website links pending permission to cache, add links after permission.
5. Post article with links to tiny website immediately, but continue attempting to obtain permission to cache and use cache after permission obtained.
6. Cache in advance, but do not use. Only post cache link *if* original site fails. Remove cache if asked.
Etc....
Oh well... we can dream, right?
Take a look at the Antec Sonata case (part of their LifeStyle series). Comes with a quiet power supply and a quiet case fan (and you get a 2nd Panaflow 120mm for the hard drive area). Those cases are only around $100-$120.
The bigger the fan, the less RPM it needs to push a given volume of air... this usually means less noise.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
Not in my experience, usually the CPU fans are 60mm and higher RPM, whereas the power supply is generally larger with a slower RPM. To the first order RPM == noise...
Eh, noise is really related to the amount of air being moved (CFM) and the path the air takes. Air through the PS is very turbulent, while air off the CPU (& other flat surfaces) is fairly smooth. Turbulence == noise.
One additional annoyance is that most motherboard manufacturers go to the added length of putting unnecessary fans on the board chipset as well. These tend to be small (40mm) and run at stupidly high speeds (6000+ RPM) given the amount of power dissipation they need to counter.
Like the little 40mm fan that was cooling the northbridge on my KT7A-RAID, until it stopped working (dust). Now the board only sees one HD.
...Time is the best teacher, unfortunately it kills all of its students.
I took apart an eMac once (violate the warranty and risk electrocution on day one of ownership, woo-hoo!), and discovered that Apple used this sort of trick to reduce a lot of the noise their systems could make. Since the guts of the eMac are nested right under the CRT on your desk, they were pretty hard-core about keeping the machine quiet. The only fan is a huge (looks like 5 or 6 inch diameter) case fan at the back, with airflow all guided though the heatsinks to get there, and little bits of padding and "weather stipping"-like material is wedged between any two parts that could cause a noise problem. It's quite a sight to behold.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If you use linux, you can find out just how loud your hard drives are by typing "hdparm -y /dev/hda /dev/hdb (etc)" replacing hda/hdb with the appropriate device names of your hard drives. The -y will put them into standby mode, making them spin down. For me, this makes the difference between lots of noise and hardly any noise.
The moral of this story is: don't get sucked into the hype of silent cpu fans like I did... when there are possibly much louder components to work on.
Static shouldn't be an issue unless you start combing your cat inside the case.
removing the plates is not always a good idea, the point of having them blocked is actually to increase air flow past the items needed. If you remove those plates then the air will rush out past your cards as apposed to passing your processor. anywhere their is a whole in your case their should be a fan pushing or pulling. This is more important than just letting lots of area for air to enter or leave your case. For instance, blow air through a straw and that air moves very quicly through the straw, now cut slits in the straw and feel it. Air won't move as quickly, in fact the extra opening will create eddies, and blow back. I hope I am displaying this idea clearly. Put those plates back in cause your just making your computer ugly, not increasing air movement.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
In the random-tip department.. I've been using a little teflon pot scraper; should be available in most stores' "housewares" department. I don't remember the exact cost, but I'm sure it was well under a buck. (Obviously, get a new one; don't want bits of food in your grease ;) )
Anyway, it works nicely for the purpose, and I don't have to hunt for a card to use. Just keep it in a desk drawer with my cables & whatnots.
Here is how I quieted down an athlonXP 1700 system to the point that I got driven nuts instead by the motor noise of my hard drives:
Power supply: antec TRUEpower 380w. This unit puts out plenty of nice clean power, and also has a dedicated 3.3v rail as opposed to being a fork from teh 5v rail. This just means it's a more robust unit. Also runs incredibly quiet.
CPU Fan: Zalman flower (I think 3500). This clip on unit has a bracket fan and a speed knob. I echewed the speed knob and replaced teh 92mm fan on the bracket with a 120mm enermax variable RPM fan, reason for this is further down.
VGA cooling: Zalman heatpipe cooler (something 80) This unit has NO fans, and uses a massive surface area to dissipate heat. It uses heatpipes to achieve efficient heat transfer to both heatsink elements on this cooler. This cooler works so well that the mere circulation effect from my 120mm fan was enough to keep a GeForce4 TI4400 running smoothly.
Motherboard cooling: I yanked the fan off my motherboard, that 120mm fan was more than enough to keep it cool due to it's proximity to the CPU socket, and how large that fan is.
The system overall was so quiet I turned it off on accident a few times becuase I wanted to turn it on, and couldn't hear it. The hard drive noise is only noticable at very short distances, but hard drive access will be very audible due to teh low noise floor, and I found it to be slightly bothersome.
Ultimately I moved to watercooling, to get quiet with more powerful components. I cannot reccomend watercooling to everyone however, since it still has many risks that even a skilled PC assembler may have trouble with.
At the risk of getting a little off-topic, I recently bought one of the AquariusII kits to cool a 700MHz Duron home PC. I fitted the cooler per manufacturers specs, and switched on: Great, quiet and cool running. A week later the PC died - the heatsink had slipped off the mounting and the Duron died a terrible thermal death :( .
I replaced with a new MB, RAM and AMD Athlon 2200+ CPU (it was Christmas, after all). Connected up, and it ran for a couple of restarts (3-4 days) before failing. The heatsink had slipped and the (new) CPU was toast :( :( :( .
I looked at the mounting kit much more carefully after that, and basically the heatsink mounting for the socket A sucks. The design does not allow for a solid mouning of the heatsink on the Socket A. (The mounting mechanism on the Socket 462 is great). The heatsinkis held on by a small clip which is prone to shake loose if there is any vibration or movement.
I've found it is possible to mount the heatsink solidly on the Socket A, but it's not possible using the manufacturesrs method. I'm still trying to decide if I should revive the PC with a new CPU and try again, or revert to the Zalman air cooling that was in place previously.
I got fed up with the noise from my Athlon XP 2000+ a few months ago. It was so loud that it could easily have been mistaken for a vacuum cleaner. I was using a generic 6-fan case (4 in the front, one on the side and one at the rear) and a Cooler Master 6700rpm heat sink to keep the heat down.
Having heard good things about the Antec Sonata, I went out and picked one up. After a bit of looking into what heat sinks were available at the local Fry's, and basically just wanting anything less noisy than the Cooler Master, I picked up a Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu.
Currently, the Zalman is spinning at 1430 RPM (fwiw the P/S fan is spinning at 1834 RPM.) It can be adjusted to suit your cooling needs with an included adjustment unit, but I was going for quiet. The computer now runs about 10c cooler than before on the CPU, and perhaps 15c cooler on the MB according to the onboard sensors. Not bad, considering that both fans are running at a fraction of the speed from the previous case. The only issue I could see someone having with the heatsink is that it's so large that it doesn't fit on all motherboards.
While the Zalman helped, the Sonata has really made a significant difference in both the area inside AND around my computer. Antec built this case with what is quite possibly the best configuration for hard drives I've ever seen in a PC case: they're mounted sideways on individual HD trays. The drives are mounted to the tray using rubber grommets, which make the two 7200RPM drives in my case nearly silent. The sound of the drives accessing, which before was a rather loud chatter, is now nearly inaudible. There are 4 internal 3.5" HD bays, so I didn't have to give anything up for the silence. Better yet, due to the design of the trays the HD cables don't block the airflow of the case since they go directly to the back of the case. The case even looks nice, with a glossy black finish on the metal parts of the case and matte black plastic on the front.
For someone who wants to throw together a system and get nearly all the parts in one box, the Sonata is an excellent case to go with. The Zalman complements the case nicely, though if you have a preferred quiet heatsink you might be better off using that - the Zalman is not compatible with all motherboards due to its large size. I'm quite happy with it on my system though (using an Asus A7V266-E).
GPL: Free as in will