Kryotech Cool K6-2 500

A Tragic Flaw

The quality of peripherals that go into the Kryotech system begins to matter much more than in a normal system, especially when dealing with memory.   This could be because of increased electrical noise in the system while running at such an increased frequency, or because of the cooling methods applied to the system, nevertheless the fact does remain that not all peripherals will work flawlessly in the system.  AnandTech's tests with the Cool K6-2 revealed that that Matrox G200 came closest to being one of those incompatible peripherals, normal usage of the card wasn't hindered at all, however there was the rare occasion that the card would be the cause of spontaneous crashes with the system which would not occur in an identical test bed setup without the Kryotech unit.  Most other peripherals experienced no problems at all, which is a definite plus, however the Kryotech system is extremely sensitive to the quality of memory used.  From the tests AnandTech conducted, Samsung and NEC SDRAM chips and modules seem to work fine but according to Kryotech, Advantage Memory is the recommended option in a stability and compatibility sense.

Too little too late?

At a price of $1695 for the motherboard, CPU, case, and cooling system, the Cool K6-2 is a bit steep considering the performance it offers over a readily available and comparatively cheap K6-2 400 mb/cpu/case combo.  With many users already able to overclock their K6-2 400's to 450MHz without using Kryotech's cooling system, the extra 5% performance boost isn't really worth the money; and in that respect, the Kryotech Cool K6-2 500 is in fact, too little, too late.  Had the system been released at 500MHz back in May of 1998 when it was announced at E3, things might have been different, however with the price of a Celeron 300A at under $100, and with the price of a K6-2 400 quickly approaching the $200 mark, the Cool K6-2 just isn't worth it now.

Is the system a failure?  Absolutely not.   Kryotech's Cool K6-2 is an example of what can be done, and as a glimpse at the future of Kryotech, AnandTech decided to tear out the K6-2 400 CPU that was installed in the system and replace it with a K6-3 to see how well AMD's forthcoming chip would operate at -40 degrees Celsius.  

Modifying the System

The sample K6-3 AnandTech tested exhibited overclocking results similar to that of the K6-2, in that the physical peak of the processor appeared to be 500MHz, with 550MHz not booting at all.  A final judgement on the processor's overclocking abilities with the Kryotech system can be made closer to the release date of the chip since the sample tested was an engineering sample, however the sheer thought of having a K6-3 running at 550MHz and beyond brought quite a smile to this reviewer's face.   The performance difference between a K6-3 running at 450MHz and one running at 500MHz was approximately 6% in the Winstone tests that would run, however the entire suite would not complete as a result of one or more factors, most likely due to the nature of processor with it being an engineering sample.