TennMax P3STF Pentium III Heatsink

The boys from TENNMAX kindly sent me one of their new P3STF Pentium III heatsink and fan combos to look at. This is basically the P3TF with larger fans. The P3TF, as reviewed on other sites, was a fairly good performing heatsink for its class. It just lacked that “little extra” it needed to be a serious overclockers heatsink. I always look forward to products from TennMax. Everything I have ever had from them has been VERY high quality.

The TennMax P3STF uses 50mm x 15mm fans as compared to the P3TF’s 50mm x 10mm. The fans on the P3STF are 5200 RPM fans rated at 17 CFM each for a total of 34 CFM airflow!

The TennMax P3STF uses the same heatsink as the P3TF, which is a very well designed and efficient heatsink for its size. The mounting system is unique and very easy to use. It has two pin assembly’s that you slide in from the back of the CPU then you just slide two latches mounted to the CPU to retain the pins.

The P3STF comes with TennMax’s own “phase change interface pad” which is very effective at heat transfer from the CPU to the heatsink. This pad is made of a material that actually bonds itself to the CPU and heatsink when it is heated.

Performance:

I ran a comparison of the TennMax P3STF against the P3TF to see if the larger fans made any difference in the performance of this unit. The test bed was an Abit BX6R2 with the thermal diode monitoring and a PIII 450 clocked at 600 @ 2.1 volts. I would start the system and let the temp stabilize for 15 minutes then run Prime 95 and note the diode temp after about 20 minutes. The room temp during testing was 74F and ambient temp in the case was 78F.

P3TF – 109F
P3STF – 102F

As you can see the better fans on the P3STF made a sizable difference in the temp of the CPU core bringing the heatsink into the category as one to use for overclocking.

Conclusion:

The P3STF is a very nice heatsink. If you have little room to work with or are afraid to hang 1+ pounds on the front of your CPU, this would be a very good alternative. The TennMax P3STF is not in the size class of the Alpha P3125S or even the Vantec P3D 5030, but has very good performance and can “keep up” with the big boys because of the very well engineered heatsink.

 
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This review and comments are just my personal observations and
opinion. As with any products and services, please research throughly
before making any purchases. The reviewer and overclockers.com shall not
and will not be held liable for any damages cause by products reviewed in
this article.


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