Amdmb.com Ultimate System Guide

Cables, Cooling and Power

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

Heatsink – Akasa Silver Mountain – $40 each ($80 total)
For cooling the two Athlon MP 1.2 GHz processors, I chose to use the Akasa Silver Mountain heatsinks for a couple of reasons. First, they fit very well and did the cooling job very well. They are rated as one of the top heatsinks for Socket A processors because of a good clip design and their copper and silver combination metal. For more information on that, be sure to read our Akasa Silver Mountain review by our cooling guru, Bob Dyl. Secondly, our friends at Plycon noted how cool they would look in the modified case with the green light! After this installation, I very much agree with them. The silver coating on the all copper heatsink is incredibly shiny and this reflects a lot of the light from inside the case, making the visibility through the window excellent.

 

Other Option: Thermalright SK-6 – $40 each ($80 total) For those who wish to use these instead, you are more than welcome to. I am sure the copper will look nearly as good inside the case and they perform just as well as the Akasas. However, they are a bit more of a pain to install and remove, in case you plan on upgrading CPUs intermittently. You can also find these at Plycon.

Cables – Japanese Silver Rounded Cables – $21-$51 each
These are by far the nicest IDE/Floppy/SCSI cables I have had the privilege of working with. Available at Plycon, these are machine rounded and combed cables that are covered in a silver mesh shield and then covered by a transparent plastics cover for protection. The cables have a very small diameter than the other hand-made or machine-made custom cables and the connectors are not bulky. Having rounded cables is almost a necessity in order to have the Ultimate System as they improve air flow and over all system cooling performance.

 

Oh, and once again, Plycon suggested that the silver mesh would be a great aesthetic look, especially when coupled with the case light. They were right once again!

Power – Delta 465 watt Dual-Athlon Power Supply – $95
As far as power supplies go, there are only a few available that work with the Tyan Thunder K7 motherboard. I recommend the Delta simply because I have now used three different ones without a hiccup or problem. It has enough power to push all the hard drives, fans and accessories you could want.

Other Option: NMB 465 watt Dual-Athlon Power Supply – $100 Another excellent option.