The Clawhammer

Athlon 64 3200+

Athlon 64 3200+, enough said. We went with the stock heatsink and fan with Cooler Master Premium heatsink compound (Shin Etsu). The AMD stock heatsink is rather simple, constructed of aluminum without any copper core and only a standard fan. In our testing, it did prove more than adequate in keeping the cpu cool. For extreme overclocking with voltage bumps, a larger heatsink may be needed. We'd go with the Zalman's that are used on our Opteron system. I prefer the aluminum-copper Zalman's vs the all copper ones because of the weight factor. In theory, with tower cases, there may be uneven stress on the heatsink mount since the forces that hold it onto the cpu are perpendicular to the weight of the heatsink. With a desktop case this would not be a factor. I would definitely consider the weight of a heatsink if you are continually transporting your system around. All copper heatsinks do have a performance advantage not only for the increased heat conductivity of copper, but also due to the increased mass. Recall that the rated heat capacity of the heatsinks are measured per gram of mass, so a heavier heatsink will be able to absorb more heat from the CPU with a smaller change in temperature.

Alan: We've heard a lot about Athlon 64 3200+ CPUs being hard to find, and so we got our entire Athlon64 setup at retail as a secret shopper. There wasn't any hassle at all. We found the best out-the-door price for the CPU from www.directron.com and got it without any shipping delays. In fact, although we used the first-time buyer free shipping discount for a Wednesday ship date, the package was already on its way here a day ahead of schedule on Tuesday. The motherboards seem easy to find. We got ours at www.ewiz.com, but we also saw the MSI Socket 754 motherboard on sale at CompUSA of all places!

Editor's Note: Although we purchased the CPU as a secret buyer, after publishing the article, Directron offered to sponsor the CPU. This means more money for us to spend on the next article for you guys :)

Alexis: In summary we spend the big bucks around the core of the system, the memory and processor. Our case wasn't cheap at about $80 without a power supply, but it offered us a good functionality with its big fans and flexibility with its Extended ATX capable form factor and many drive bays. For some people it may look a little bland, since it is only available in beige, although I prefer my system to be known by what's inside not how it looks. That said, Chenbro may recruit many more gamers if they offered their case with more front panel options. They definitely have the manufacturing capability as seen in their Xpider designer series of cases.


Alan:
Pentium 4 Systems (2.8GHz and 3.0GHz)
The Pentium 4 systems we used in this article are Micron 545G ClientPro's built around the Intel Desktop Board "Bonanza" D875PBZ. This is Intel's flagship reference board on flagship systems from a tier one supplier. They don't have as many fans, as many expansion possibilities, or luxury features as a custom system, but they are well built with quality components.

We'll shortly be building a file server around the Tyan Trinity i875P motherboard, powered by a PC Power and Cooling 510 ATX so we'll leave the discussion of building a high-end P4 to Alexis's "How to build a low-cost network attached storage server." Once again, it'll be one of those articles where you'll learn more about building high-performance systems not necessarily because you'll want to build a file server, but it'll teach you how to build better gaming systems or no compromise systems.