| Hot Rod for 2000: Dual Celeron
by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson |
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Fan-Tastic, Houston! Groucho Marx was walking along a New York street during a heat wave in the 1950s when he was accosted by a passerby who recognized the bushy eyebrows and trademark cigar. "Groucho, I'm your biggest fan!" "Stay close to me, on a day like this everyone needs a big fan," deadpanned the comic.
 3DfxCOOL PHO Fan Any time you push a CPU beyond its rated speed, you need a big fan. Enter Bart A. Lane of 3DfxCOOL. Bart knows his fans, has researched not only the best units but even the technology behind these units, down to doing heat dissipation tests. 3DfxCOOL stocks a huge range of fans and will even custom build fans. I chose five fans as listed above. The PHO (Pentium high output) you see above is a massive unit that Bart chose after testing twenty five different units. This one ran 14 degrees (fahrenheit) cooler than the next best unit! The PHO is the biggest fan/heatsink for socket 7 CPUs that is available today, and is a large 60mm item with a dual ball bearing motor. The aluminum heatsink is simply expansive and has a Thermal Resistance of 0.5° c/w. With the smart fan features your BIOS will be able to monitor the fan's rpm and set off an alarm if it drops too low. With the correct software (Shuttle's System Manager or Motherboard Monitor , you will be able to monitor fan speed and CPU temperature in your operating system. 3DfxCOOL also makes a CelHO dual fan cooler unit, but if you use the slocket adapter you must use the Pentium High Output unit instead...
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I mounted a PHO fan on each CPU, and the third one is pushing air out the back of the case. The CaseHO fan is mounted on the lower front of the case, blowing air over my video, sound, and LAN boards. The hddHO unit is an aluminum hard drive cooler with three ball bearing fans blowing over your hot hardware. Who would build a hot rod without RPM guage, oil and water temperature guages? Ted's car had the biggest whopping RMP guage I've ever seen. It started at 0 and went to 10,000 RPM, with a red line indicator he could set wherever he wanted it.
 To that end Shuttle's System Manager comes into play. I personally prefer the aftermarket RPM guages supplied in Motherboard Monitor. This utility is incredibly configurable and can even be set up to send you an EMAIL when your system exceeds the parameters you set. Handy if you are travelling and anxious about that critical but overclocked system, so long as you have a cell phone at your disposal so you can call in the fire department! A Board for All Seasons I chose the Shuttle 649A for this system, a high end product, because I am saving so much on the CPU's I can afford to shift some cash around. However, the MSI 6120 would also be an excellent choice for a dual processor SCSI system at a lower price point.
 Dual SLOT 1 "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." For the technically minded, I can't imagine a more impressive mainboard. I've often fretted over the layout of my mainboards, since I have lived on the lower rung of the hardware scale for budget reasons. The Shuttle 649A is like a Volvo or a Saab after having driven a Volkswagon beetle all your life. Go to Part IV
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