Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-03-15, 01:22:
This was the best Socket A cooler I ever used. They very rarely come up on Ebay, and they've had pretty high prices when they do. They originally came with bumpers to install on the CPU since the narrow footprint misses the stock ones - I don't know what you'd use now since the originals are going to be long gone, you'd have to improvise something to keep from chipping the CPU core.
I used the Thermalright SLK-900A back in the day to keep my 1700+ T-bred B nice and cool running at some 2300-2400 MHz, about on par with a stock 3200+ Barton. Instantly made me a fan of Thermalright's simple, no-nonsense, performance focused designs back then. No fancy shapes or lights or custom fans that were next to impossible to find replacements for (looking at you, every Zalman cooler ever made; or the likes of Cooler Master Aero or various Orb coolers). Just the best air cooling performance you could buy, in a plain brown cardboard box, and freedom to pick whatever type of fan you want to pair it with. I then switched to their XP-120 during my Athlon 64 days, then the TRUE-120 that served me great for an entire decade, from first gen Core 2 Duo all the way up to the Haswell based i5 4670k. Only stopped using it once I upgraded to Ryzen. At that point I also switched to Noctua for cooling, which seems to stick to similar principles that made early 2000s Thermalright's coolers great.
I still have the TRUE-120 and XP-120, but unfortunately didn't keep the SLK-900A, which I now regret. I occasionally look for one on ebay, but like you said, they rarely show up.