SUMMARY: An effective cooling solution with moderate noise levels.

The good guys at Alpha were nice enough to send a sample of their PRE9060 Pentium 4 (LGA775) Heatsink to test. Note that this heat sink is designed only for LGA775 - the mounting gear uses the four holes surrounding the LGA775 socket and will not fit any other pattern.

The bare heatsink the very dense array of circular pins:

The base is a copper insert and has visible polishing ridges which I could slightly feel by dragging my fingernail over it:

Parts that ship with the unit includes a mounting bracket which uses the four hole surrounding the socket - this will require removal of the motherboard to mount.

Overall, this is typical ALpha - well built and substantial.

The Alpha was tested on the CPU Die Simulator which gives results that are unaffected by motherboard influences. This is a small die test - results with a LGA775 CPU will be somewhat better due to its heat spreader (the watt densities over the heat spreader are somewhat lower compared to the actual chip); however, for purposes of comparative rankings, I will test all heatsinks with the smaller die.

The fan used was an Oriental Motor #MD925A-12S, a 92 mm unit rated 45.9 cfm @ 3,400 rpm, 36 dBA. Alpha orients fans to blow out from the heatsink rather than in - there is no performance advantage to blowing into the heatsink, and in other tests, blowing in was marginally worse. To gauge the upper performance range, I also tested with a Vantec Tornado, a 92 x 38 mm rated at 119 cfm @ 4800 rpm - also screamingly loud.

Interesting to see that a very aggressive fan does not yield substantially better results. Die Simulator results place the Alpha PRE9060 in the upper rank of heatsinks tested to date (Heatsink Ranking).

Alpha's PRE9060 Pentium 4 (LGA775) Heatsink is an effective cooling solution with moderate noise levels.

Thanks again to Alpha for sending this our way.

Email Joe