Introduction

Today we have the pleasure to bring you a quite exciting review, Alpha has been around from the beginning with their high quality heatsinks. Since the launch of Socket A and the AMD socket processor we have seen a massive boom in the sales of custom heatsinks. Alpha’s PAL8045 delivered excellent performance and is still regarded with respect even today, after almost 3 years! Alpha introduced their Intel P4 solution in 2002, the PAL8942. Today we have in our test lab their latest Intel heatsink: S-PAL8952. Whether the S- stands for Super we are here to find out.

Since the release of the earlier Alpha products the world has moved on. Back then people wanted extreme performance no matter what the noise. Today however we want silence and good performance. To this end we decided to compare the new Alpha breed to a well known silent power, the Zalman CNPS7000-Cu.

On with the show:



Alpha provides 3 different version of their heatsink:

S-PAL8952T (no fan, no thermal grease) ~$44

S-PAL8952M81 (47cfm 80mm fan, thermal grease) ~$55

S-PAL8952M82 (20cfm 80mm fan, thermal grease) ~$61

The thermal grease they include comes from Microforg, Model YG6260-5 to be exact. A comparison review versus Arctic Silver 3 and others can be found here.

They also provide all the mounting hardware needed, the installation method hasn’t changed, so you’ll have to remove your motherboard in order to install this heatsink.



Let’s get it installed ->

Heatsink:

The heatsink is machine lapped and it shows, you can feel a very fine texture on the base, no mirror finish, but far from bad either:





Did I tell you this heatsink is massive? However its size matches almost exactly that of the default P4 heatsink bracket, so you won’t have issues to install this baby!

Alpha has always been known to be on of the sole heatsink manufactures which designed their sinks to be used with the fans sucking the air away from the HS, instead of blowing it down through the fins. How this helps performance, we’ll try to find out during the testing

Here’s what Alpha has done to improve the performance of the S-PAL8952 when compared to the older PAL8942




Here’s a shot from above, showing the difference of the pins’ shape

Installation:


Remove the default bracket, and install the 4 standoffs


4 springs with screws in them secure the heatsink in its place and as you can see, a perfect fit!


Next you put over the intake cover, which is there to guide the air through the heatsinks


Then you install either a 80x15mm, 80x25mm or a monstrous 80x35mm fan onto this heatsink, all the screws needed for this installation are included

With everything installed it is time for some testing ->

Test Setup:

JMke's Test Setup
CPU	Intel P4 2.6 "C"
Mainboard	Chaintech 9PJL2 Silver
Cooling	* ALPHA S-PAL8952 * Zalman CNPS7000-CU
Memory	2 * 256Mb PC3700 OCZ Rev.2
Video	nVidia Geforce 1 DDR

I used Arctic Silver 5 during testing. I remounted every heatsink 3 times and took the average results. To achieve maximum "Load" temperatures I launching the application K7burn twice (our P4 has HT enabled, launching the program only once gives 50% load)

Fan / heatsink combo’s used are the following:

M81 = Delta AFB0812SH-F00 (80x80x25.4mm) - 4000RPM / 40db(A)

M82 = Sanyo Denki 109P0812M701 (80x80x15mm) - 2000RPM / 21db(A)

Coolink Cool-VS1 Low = 80x80x25.4mm - 1500RPM / 19db(A)

Coolink Cool-VS1 High = 80x80x25.4mm - 4600RPM / 44db(A)

Zalman Fan High = custom size - 2400RPM / 25db(A)

Zalman Fan Low = custom size - 1350RPM / 20db(A)

Environment temperature is mentioned where necessary, the test setup was not installed in a closed case, but as you can see, the environment temp is pretty high, as the test setup is located in a warm area of the room.



All idle temps are in the same region but when we stress the CPU we see our winners step forward, the Coolink at its highest settings is able to take the lead at the cost of noise. The real competition is between the different “silent” solutions. The Zalman @ low is bested by the M82 fan Alpha includes!

To give you a better idea of the noise / heat ratio I’ve made this graph, lower score = better



Combining the fan noise and load temperatures clearly shows you that the extra noise created by the high CFM fans is not really worth it in the end. The Zalman @ High is able to keep a very nice ratio between generated noise and performance, although the difference is clearly audible between 25 and 21db(a)

Now let’s turn up the heat, overclocking the system by raising the FSB to 240 and the vcore to 1.63v netting us an average heat output of 100 Watt.



Again the Zalman and Alpha give it their best to provide the most silent system without letting the CPU temp go into dangerous regions. The M82+S-PAL8952 seems to be preferred solution for those who can’t stand noise.



The graph doesn’t change much from our results at 68Watt heat output. The lead of the high CFM fans has diminished, the Coolink running at its lowest settings falls back while the M82 is cornered between the Zalman running high/low.

Overall very good results from the new Alpha, in our earlier P4 heatsink comparison we’ve put the Zalman CNPS7000-Cu against the Swiftech MCX478-V and Thermalright SP-94. From our comparative results obtained here we can conclude that the S-PAL8952 is able to keep up with the competition nicely!

As we mentioned in the introduction, Alpha has their fans sucking hot air away from the heatsink instead of blowing down through the pins. I’ve flipped the M82 fan to find out if it makes a significant difference



Sticking to Alpha’s guidelines gives you 2°C improvement, this difference will increase when using higher output fans as the efficiently of the “sucking”-method ;-) also increases. Another benefit from this fan setup I noticed is the decrease in temperatures when it comes to motherboard components in the vicinity of the socket. Instead of blowing hot air on the capacitors and chips you are removing it, a welcome bonus.

Onto the final words ->

Conclusion

Alpha has delivered a solid solution for the P4 with their new updated release of the PAL heatsink. A few minor adjustments to the pins (height/form) has brought the performance on par with other high end products while the mounting system could have benefited from an overhaul as the installation is still quite a time consuming process.

PRO
Good performance
Optional M82 fan ideally suited for silent computing
Very clear manual included
Secure installation using 4 mounting holes


CON
Optional M81 fan is too loud for daily usage, unless you can stand the added noise.
Installation requires motherboard removal

In the end I’m confident to say that the S- might very well stand for Super-PAL! Your friend in overclocking :)

I would like to thank Takashi from Alpha for giving us the possibility to review this fine product. Keep your eyes open as we are currently testing their S-PAL version for the Socket A also. If it equals the improvements of the Intel version, then it’s safe to say that Alpha is back in business!



Questions/Comments: Forum thread