I bought this heatsink about a year ago to cool my AMD Thunderbird 1.4ghz since those chips ran hot to begin with and it worked great. Then, I upgraded to my AMD Xp2100+ and used the same cooler. It works wonders. With the XP2100+
oc'd to XP2700+ speeds by bumping the voltage up and the
fsb from 133 to 166, the TAK68 easily kept it from every going over 50'C in full load, performing better than my friend's aquarius II and only costing $30.
Now for the actual review:
The first thing I noticed was how heavy the heatsink was when I took it out of the box which I thought was odd for an all aluminum
hsf. It's no light piece of equipment. It was also very good looking with no blemishes or scratches on the surface. The
cpu contact point was also very clean.
You can also see from these pictures that it has two fans. They are both very quiet and run at about 5000 RPM. The box included a splitter for the fans so you could hook both up to the CPU_FAN terminal on your motherboard but I prefered to just use the CPU_FAN and SYS_FAN terminals. Worked well for me.
Next, you see the interesting mounting hardware. This
hsf was by far the easiest to install on any computer I've ever used. You simply hook the two ends to the socket and turn the nob at the top to tighten it. It's very secure and could hardly be moved once seated and screwed down all the way. Also, no trouble with hurting the
cpu. You know when you've tightened the screw enough.
This thing has my full endorsement for ability, looks, and low noise level.
I've heard some other stuff about this heat sink too. One guy bored a hole in the center with a leav (spelling?) and inserted a copper core and said it knocked the temps down by ~5'C which isn't bad considering how well this thing performs already. Another guy stuck on two Delta fans and said it worked wonders but was incredibly loud. Personally, I think this is great just the way it is. Anyone in need of a nice, inexpensive air cooler for socket A, look into this.