These are good.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/825/6

Of course you could go gonzo (complete with a Delta "electric tornado" fan)
https://www.anandtech.com/show/825/4

Sometimes ebay listings for motherboards have a copper beast attached. I like Thermalright and Zalman coolers. Alpha is probably rather uncommon.

Those Alpha pin coolers suck big time. I had one back in the day. Piece of trash it was.

The thin copper fin one is a bit better, but for great cooling you want a cooler with heatpipes.

The Thermaltake Silent Tower was the very first heatpipe cooler I bought. The only bad thing about it is the way the stock mounting hardware works. You really need to use nylon nuts on the motherboard side as the stock setup just has the bolts go through the board and directly to the bracket that hold the cooler on place. It doesn't work very well that way.

As soon as you add the nylon nuts on the motherboard side, the stability is rock solid.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article201-page1.html

The Big Typhoon and Big Typhoon VX are pretty much the best you can use without modification and they work extremely well. They use the same exact mounting hardware as the Silent Tower.
The only difference the VX has, it that is comes with a higher CFM/more blades fan but you can put whatever 120mm fan you want on there so it really doesn't matter.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Thermaltake/BigTyphoon/

Edit: With either of these coolers you will want one of those copper shims to help protect the CPU die when mounting the cooler. I use one on my socket-A builds no matter what cooler I am using.

I also opted for nylon wing-nuts to tighten down the retention bracket instead of using the dumb tiny metal nuts. It makes it way, way, way easier and they won't come loose either.

cyclone3d wrote:

Those Alpha pin coolers suck big time. I had one back in the day. Piece of trash it was. […]
Show full quote

Those Alpha pin coolers suck big time. I had one back in the day. Piece of trash it was.

The thin copper fin one is a bit better, but for great cooling you want a cooler with heatpipes.

The Thermaltake Silent Tower was the very first heatpipe cooler I bought. The only bad thing about it is the way the stock mounting hardware works. You really need to use nylon nuts on the motherboard side as the stock setup just has the bolts go through the board and directly to the bracket that hold the cooler on place. It doesn't work very well that way.

As soon as you add the nylon nuts on the motherboard side, the stability is rock solid.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article201-page1.html

The Big Typhoon and Big Typhoon VX are pretty much the best you can use without modification and they work extremely well. They use the same exact mounting hardware as the Silent Tower.
The only difference the VX has, it that is comes with a higher CFM/more blades fan but you can put whatever 120mm fan you want on there so it really doesn't matter.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Thermaltake/BigTyphoon/

Edit: With either of these coolers you will want one of those copper shims to help protect the CPU die when mounting the cooler. I use one on my socket-A builds no matter what cooler I am using.

I also opted for nylon wing-nuts to tighten down the retention bracket instead of using the dumb tiny metal nuts. It makes it way, way, way easier and they won't come loose either.

The question now is where the heck would you find these coolers, I haven't seen them anywhere.

cyclone3d wrote:

Those Alpha pin coolers suck big time. I had one back in the day. Piece of trash it was. […]
Show full quote

Those Alpha pin coolers suck big time. I had one back in the day. Piece of trash it was.

The thin copper fin one is a bit better, but for great cooling you want a cooler with heatpipes.

The Thermaltake Silent Tower was the very first heatpipe cooler I bought. The only bad thing about it is the way the stock mounting hardware works. You really need to use nylon nuts on the motherboard side as the stock setup just has the bolts go through the board and directly to the bracket that hold the cooler on place. It doesn't work very well that way.

As soon as you add the nylon nuts on the motherboard side, the stability is rock solid.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article201-page1.html

The Big Typhoon and Big Typhoon VX are pretty much the best you can use without modification and they work extremely well. They use the same exact mounting hardware as the Silent Tower.
The only difference the VX has, it that is comes with a higher CFM/more blades fan but you can put whatever 120mm fan you want on there so it really doesn't matter.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Thermaltake/BigTyphoon/

Edit: With either of these coolers you will want one of those copper shims to help protect the CPU die when mounting the cooler. I use one on my socket-A builds no matter what cooler I am using.

I also opted for nylon wing-nuts to tighten down the retention bracket instead of using the dumb tiny metal nuts. It makes it way, way, way easier and they won't come loose either.

Heatpipe coolers usually weren't available for socket 462, although definitely go for one if that's an option and it suits your genre.
The Thermalright SI-97 is probably better. I've always disliked Thermaltake going back to the GOrb days. They're the poster boys of form over function.

The all copper Thermaltake I snagged back in the day worked fine and still works for me.

Looks like this:

Have you taken the fan off and cleaned the heatsink fins?

Unknown_K wrote:

The all copper Thermaltake I snagged back in the day worked fine and still works for me.

Looks like this:

JetArtK7-2.jpg

That would be pretty sweet. Gotta find one though.

Unknown_K wrote:

Have you taken the fan off and cleaned the heatsink fins?

Yes, that I have done and applied new Arctic MX-4 thermal paste. I just don't think it will be sufficient for a higher spec Athlon XP 2400+ or 2600+ being an all aluminum construction.

gryffinwings wrote:

The question now is where the heck would you find these coolers, I haven't seen them anywhere.

There are 4x Big Typhoons / VX on eBay right now and a few more if you search just by the model numbers.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_tr … yphoon&_sacat=0

There is one Silent Tower on eBay right now:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Thermaltake-CL-P0025 … an/182439127729

I still have mine back from when I bought them new.

Here is another option - made by MGE ???
https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Sub-Zero-K7-CPU- … ng/372429301540

gdjacobs wrote:

Heatpipe coolers usually weren't available for socket 462, although definitely go for one if that's an option and it suits your genre.
The Thermalright SI-97 is probably better. I've always disliked Thermaltake going back to the GOrb days. They're the poster boys of form over function.

The Silent Tower and the Big Typhoon / Big Typhoon VX were pretty much the best coolers available when they were released.

Yes, the golden orbs were trash, but the heatsink tech back then was pretty horrible for the most part.

The crazy Alpha coolers with the make your ears bleed fans were considered the best back when they were available, but they really were trash. The ONLY reason they cooled anything was because of those crazy fans.

Once thin-fin stuff came out, it was a lot better than the older, crappier designs. Then when heatpipe stuff came out it was game-over for everything else.

I worked at a computer store back when the Silent Tower was released. It was the bomb diggity. They also had a version with copper fins but it weighed a ton and cost a decent amount more so I never got one.

There was another cooler that Thermaltake made that was meant for Socket 939, which I also still have.. but it was meant to be able to be used without a fan. Really sucked without a fan, and was just-ok-ish with a fan.

Then I got the Big Typhoon. I used it all the way up to, and including, my first LGA 1336 build with an i7-920 (with a modified mounting system). It would only cool good enough for it to run up to about 3.6Ghz, so that is when I upgraded to a Noctua NH-D14.