When I reviewed the Alpha cooler for my Socket 370 Celeron 366 CPU, I was happy with the cooling performance I was getting from it. I wasn’t surprised by it though, because most people know that the Alpha is the best air-cooling unit for the CPU. That is why when I recently got one of those new Pentium III CPUs, 3DfxCool was happy to provide me with an Alpha cooler to review with this awesome new CPU.

The CPU in question is a Pentium III SL37C with 3.6ns cache. With a 3.6ns cache rating, it is easy to see that this CPU has some good potential to run at or above 600MHz. The Pentium III 125 Alpha heatsink and fan combo is what I am trusting to get me to these levels.

Initial Impressions

When I first received the Alpha P3 125 cooler, I was surprised by the amount of parts I had to put together. The cooler included two heavy-duty ball bearing fans, the shroud to put around the heatsink fans, a bunch of screws and a couple of metal washers.

What caught my eye the most about the cooler was the copper metal surrounded by aluminum. I was a bit surprised to see that a couple of the heatsink fins were a little bent though. It looked like that during shipping; the fins were bent against the packaging. That was okay though still. All I had to do was bend them back into a straight position with my fingers.

Another good thing I noted about the cooler when first seeing it was that the copper metal surface was coated with oil. This is most likely to keep the copper surface from oxidizing and tarnishing. The Alpha P3 125 is almost twice the size of the Alpha Socket cooler.

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