First up, the Celeron 400. Of course, this chip is running at 600MHz - however, it requires 2.3v for stability at that speed. This means it basically pumps out the heat, which makes it excellent for these kinds of comparisons. The chip was tested on my Soyo SY-6VBA-133 motherboard using an MSI 6905 v1.1 slocket adapter, housed in a Macase K10 midtower case. The Soyo was used because it can monitor the on-die thermal diode of the CPU. Testing consisted of 20 minutes of Unreal Flyby with SETI@HOME running in the background to suck up any spare CPU cycles.
Well, it's not every day you see the FDP-32 coming LAST in a cooler comparison. The FKP-32 is very impressive for it's size. The Alpha spoils the party though, and stomps everyone as usual. I didn't test the standard Coppermine cooler on this chip because it's not designed for cooling Mendocino chips like the Celeron, so it's not really fair. ..and I kinda forgot. It woulda sucked anyway. Trust me.
Next, the Coppermine P3-500E. This one was running on a 133MHz FSB which makes it identical to a P3-667EB. I left it running at default voltage, ie 1.6v, and it was mounted on an IWill SlocketII FC-PGA -> Slot1 adapter. Otherwise, the testing was exactly the same as before. Sadly, I couldn't test the FDP-32 because it wouldn't fit on the SlocketII, there are some capacitors in the way. What was I saying about the problems with huge heatsinks?
Once again, the FKP-32 fares well against the larger coolers but is beaten by the Alpha. That's nothing to be ashamed of - a cooler of this size beating the FDP-32 and SuperDual is nothing short of incredible. Those are both very powerful coolers. In fact, I doubted the results and tested it against the FDP-32 again, cleaning off the thermal paste, polishing the Celeron's slug, applying new thermal paste and firing them up again.. same results. Impressive for such a tiny package. I was a little surprised at how the standard Intel unit fared - better than I expected - but this chip is not really pushing out that much heat at this low voltage.
On the face of it, the winner of this comparison is the Alpha unit. However, whenever I even mention the word Alpha on this site, I get about 20 emails from people asking me where to buy them in Australia. Save yourself the trouble - the answer is "nowhere that I know of". I've suggested bringing them in wholesale to a few vendors but nobody seems interested. They're also seriously expensive - Alpha's website lists this unit at USD$31.10, but your best bet is probably to get it from a US vendor and get them to ship it here. Either way it's not a cheap exercise. Compare this with AUD$39.00 for the GlobalWin unit from Eyo, who are famous for fast delivery times (usually next day) and the performance difference starts to look a little less important. If you've absolutely got to have the best - and have room for it - order and wait for an Alpha. For the rest of us, the Globalwin FKP-32 looks like a pretty good option..