Iwill Prescott and Northwood sinks compared

EVERYONE SEEMS TO PICK ON PRESCOTT for its heat output, and decry the massive heatsinks that accompany the new CPU.

We at the Inquirer would never stoop to such lowball lowball tactics. Nope, not us, just the unvarnished facts here.

When I was writing up the Iwill Zmax SFF system a few weeks ago, I got an e-mail telling me that it would be Prescott ready at launch, and to expect a new heatsink soon. I was fine waiting for it, mainly because I didn't have a Prescott to test on.

The heatsink arrived in short order, and all was happy. It ran all day long with a P4EE 3.2, a passable approximation of a the Prescott heat load. The thing that piqued my interest was the fact that I had a system that did not change at all except for the heatsink, and with one it was Prescott ready, the other not.

It is the ideal scientific test setup, all the variables constant except for one. That said, the difference between the Prescott and non-Prescott heatsink is very underwhelming. See for yourself.

The Prescott heatsink is on the left with the clean CPU in front of it, the old heatsink is on the right with the spoojed on P4 2.8 in front of it. Both are big, more as a consequence of the placement of the fans and case layout. At least in this case, the Prescott heatsink is not all that much bigger. A little taller, a few more fins, but not massive. You would be hard pressed to crush most of the roaches running around my kitchen with either one of these, much less a medium sized mammal as is intoned by many.

All the shipping Iwill boxes should have the Prescott heatsink. No matter what CPU you put into it, it is a solid box, and it also presented me with a unique opportunity. Thanks guys .µ