Kryotech Cool K6-3 500

The system requires that two power cables be connected, one for the main computer, one for the cooling system, so be sure to have enough open sockets where you place the system. Turning on the computer sounded much like turning on a fridge, the base of the system gave a quick shake and proceeded to cool down immediately. The LCD display at the front of the case steadily dropped from 23 degrees Celsius down to -36 in around a minute, upon hitting -36 the main system turned on and the ASUS P5A's BIOS indicated an AMD K6-3 running at 495MHz during the power on self test.

Needless to say, the stability of the system during the continuous usage tests AnandTech ran on Kryotech's Cool K6-3 500 was top notch, much greater than conventional air-cooled systems under Windows 98 and extremely reliable, something not possible when overclocking a normal K6-3 400 system to 500MHz. The temperature of the cooled system, according to Kryotech's LCD panel, varied from -40 degrees Celsius to -46 degrees, proving that their claims were well founded.

The Kryotech Cool K6-3 Test System Configuration was as follows:

• AMD K6-3 400 thermally accelerated to 500MHz
• ASUS P5A w/ 512KB L3 cache
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB) - All other Benchmarking
• Canopus Pure3D-2 Voodoo2 (12MB) - Glide Tests
• Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP TNT Video Card (16MB) - OpenGL/Direct3D tests

The Socket-7/Super7 Test System Configuration was as follows:

• AMD K6 233, AMD K6-2 300, AMD K6-3 450 (engineering sample)
• FIC PA-2013 w/ 2MB L2 Cache
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB) - All other Benchmarking
• Canopus Pure3D-2 Voodoo2 (12MB) - Glide Tests
• Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP TNT Video Card (16MB) - OpenGL/Direct3D tests
• VIA AGP GART Drivers v2.9
• VIA Bus Master IDE Drivers
• VIA PCI IRQ Remapping Drivers

The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Celeron 300, Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Pentium II 400, Intel Pentium II 450, Intel Pentium III 500
• ABIT BX6 Revision 2.0 Pentium II BX Motherboard

The Pentium Pro comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Pentium Pro 200 (256KB L2), Intel Pentium II OverDrive 333 (512KB L2)
• Octek Rhino P6 Pro Socket-8 FX Motherboard

The following drivers were common to both test systems:

• MGA G200 Drivers v1677_426
• nVidia TNT 0.48 drivers (Detonator Drivers were used in the SSE Drivers Comparison)
• DirectX 6.1
• Quake 2 v3.20 w/ 3DNow! Support enabled when applicable

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

• Ziff Davis Winstone 98 under Windows 98
• Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98 & Windows NT4 SP4
• Quake 2 v3.20 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo
• Naturally Speaking Professional Speech Recognition Software
• Microsoft Netshow Encoder
• Adobe Photoshop 5.02
• Dispatch by Rage Software w/ SSE support

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color. 3DNow! support was enabled when applicable.

For the in-depth gaming performance tests Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo was used to simulate the worst case scenario in terms of Quake 2 performance, the point at which your frame rate will rarely drop any further. In contrast, the demo1.dm2 demo was used to simulate the ideal situation in terms of Quake 2 performance, the average high point for your frame rate in normal play. The range covered by the two benchmarks can be interpreted as the range in which you can expect average frame rates during gameplay.