HSF ratings..why?

[JungleMan1]

I keep hearing that you have to have an HSF, especially for AXPs, that is EXACTLY the speed of your CPU. For example, a HSF rated for an 1800 CPU is not recommended for a 1500.

Why is this?? it makes no sense.

[Darren Wilson]

I wish I knew!!!!! Another AMD marketing scheme.....

[JungleMan1]

Well I just thought of a theory...to stop overclocking.

If they tell people that uber-1337 heatsinks should ONLY be used on their highest-clocked CPU, then people will buy their highest clocked CPU.

After all, they don't want people buying their lowest-clocked CPUs and overclocking them, do they? So they won't buy 1900 recommended heatsinks for 1500 CPUs, while they COULD and get a nice OC out of it.

Just a thought...

[Darren Wilson]

Probable theory, but I still say it is another one of AMD's screwy marketing plans LOL

[techs]

I hadn't heard that. Now that makes the whole new rating scheme really crazy! Do I need a 1533 or a 1800 for my 1800+? or is my hsf "performance rated?"...

[Garak]

anyone remember the PR rating?

[kannibul]

Cyrix still uses it, oh sorry they went out of buisiness and were picked up by VIA

[WesFlash]

JM I can honestly say that I can counter your comment to stop overclocking with a yes and no. Here it goes:
My house is rather warm. My desk is situated so my computer case's power supply blows the air into a wall about 2 inches away from the back of the case. I have an Athlon 1GHz, and had the plain old heat sink and fan that came with it. In the winter, when I got it all, it was fine because it is in the basement which is a bit cooler than the rest of the house during the winter. During the summer, it lacked enough air movement to keep the processor cool under gaming, but stable enough to surf the web. Why? The room temperature rose a few degrees. I first replaced the generic HSF with an AOC twin majesty HSF, which worked well enough within the requirements of my case then as it blew air to the side instead of directly into the side of the power supply that was milimeters away from the fan on the HSF. As summer made things hotter, it soon could no longer cope with the rising room temperatures. Then I bought a Vantec CCK-6035 heat sink, and it is cool enough now that it never runs too hot. I have never overclocked it because I know my NIC or maybe my video card will not like having the PCI bus clocked much above 34MHz as I messed up 2 NIC's while overclocking my previous celeron 466 processor to 525MHz. I can't say it enough, but if the room your computer is in runs warm and you have an AMD processor that fits in a slot A or socket A motherboard, get a better than needed HSF to be safe. There is nothing like having your computer freeze up when you just get started to play counterstrike online or some other game to make you mad. Save yourself the headache and get a good heat sink and fan combo if you own an AMD processor based system. You may not need to go to those lengths with and Intel P3 or P4 system as I don't own one and won't elaborate on something I have no personal experience with. That's my two cents, but it was born out of my own experience.
Had this computer been destined for a server room with a monster cooling system, I'd have little problem with a basic HSF rated for my processor.