Swiftech MC370 Socket-370 Peltier Cooler

In Practice

What about actual overclocking accomplishments? We could report successes and failures here, but for the most part they would be completely useless to you since there is no way of telling exactly how far you will be able to overclock with the MC370 coolers. The coolers were unable to get our Celeron 366, taking into account its hot nature, up to the magical 550MHz level but they did make the CPU stable at 458MHz using the 83MHz FSB. At the same time, for an extra $80 you could just as easily purchase a Celeron 433 or 466 and overclock those, using conventional air-cooling, for about the same price to an even higher level.

If you reverse the situation, imagine having a Celeron 400 that wouldn't normally make it up to 600MHz using conventional air-cooling methods but the addition of an MC370-1 or 2 helped achieve that feat. You'd then have a sub $200 CPU capable of performing just as well as a Pentium III 600 at under half the price of a true P3-600. Put two of them on a BP6 with two MC370 coolers and you'd have a pretty cheap dual processor workstation that although wouldn't be able to outperform a dual Pentium III 600 in all cases (due to the smaller L2 cache size), it would definitely beat a single Pentium III 600 which is what the price would come out to be equivalent to. We actually came very close to reproducing this exact situation in lab, except our Celeron 400 only made it up to 582MHz.

These two examples were designed to show you that there is always a risk with an investment in overclocking, whether you want to take it or not is up to you.

Conclusion

The MC370 is a very well constructed cooling unit, although it isn't nearly as impressive as the MC1000 and MC2000 were, it is a unique creation nonetheless. The quality of its construction and the measurable performance it delivers is up to par with what we have come to expect from Swiftech. But the real question is, should you buy one?

If you own a Celeron 500, it is probably not a wise investment, since the 500 has a very limited margin for overclocking (due to its high clock multiplier - 7.5x). The type of users that would benefit most from the MC370 would be those that have the Celeron 366s or the 400s, since both of those chips are known to be able to hit the 550MHz and 600MHz with the proper amount of cooling and/or core voltage tweaking.

In some cases, using the MC370 may exceed your expectations, in others, it may not help you at all. The risk is always there, we can only help you make an informed buying decision. You'll have the greatest chance of success if you have one of those 366s or 400s that just don't make it up to 550/600MHz+ using conventional air-cooling methods. This isn't to say that the MC370 can't be used on other CPUs, it just may not offer as great of an overclocking opportunity.

Another potential use for the MC370 would be with the new FC-PGA Pentium III CPUs since they adhere to the Socket-370 form factor as well, not to mention any future Socket-370 CPUs. We managed to try the MC370 on a few FC-PGA processors and unfortunately they didn't seem to help us overclock the already incredible overclockers to much higher levels. The main reason behind this is probably because heat isn't the major issue with overclocking these CPUs right now, Intel is still perfecting their yield on the new Coppermine core, and plus, you can't really complain if you're hitting 733MHz on an air-cooled 550MHz CPU either ;)

As for the MC370-1 vs the MC370-2, the extra $10 the MC370-2 will set you back is definitely $10 well spent. The MC370-2 offers a very noticeable improvement over the MC370-1.

What can we expect from Swiftech in the future? With the FC-PGA Pentium III due to take over the Pentium III market next year, expect to see a much more 'heavy duty' Socket-370 cooler from Swiftech in the very near future.