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Global Win VES 20 Review Written : 6/16/99Written by: Moto Racer® Price: $19.95 Global Win VES 20 Supplied by: Cooler Guys So you just got that stock heatsink off your new Pentium III and you're ready to put on a new heatsink and start overclocking. Before you can do that you're going to need a new heatsink. Presenting the VES 20 from Global Win, one of the world's biggest and best known heatsink company. The new Global Win VES 20 is a SECC 2 cooler. It's designed to work with Pentium IIIs and newer PIIs that use the SECC2 form factor. It will not work with Celerons or older SECC Pentium IIs. The cooler uses pin fins to get rid of heat from your CPU. There are allot of fins, 220 to be exact. The fins are ribbed and topped off by two 50mm x 10mm fans that spin at 5,000 RPM, moving 11 CFM of air each. Other features includes vents cut into the sink to allow the air from the fans to blow down onto the CPU's L2 cache. This is a very nice feature indeed, since it's normally the L2 cache that prevent a Pentium III from reaching very high overclock speeds. Size wise, the VES 20 measures 136.7mm x 46.7mm x 21.5mm. This is no where near the size of Global Win's VEK 12, which only sells for a few dollars more. However, the VEK 12 is not designed for SECC2 CPUs. The SECC2 spec calls for a plastic backplate and an open front face. The thermal plate that is used in SECC cartridges like the old Pentium II is no longer there. This allows the heatsink to make direct contact with the CPU core, making for better cooling. Installing the VES 20 is a 30 second operation. Just fit those 4 brass pins threw the corresponding holes on the Pentium III, snap on the supplied mounting clip and you're done. The VES 20 comes with a thermo pad to make better contact with the CPU core. You can remove the pad if you like. It does take some scraping however. Of course you would only remove the pad if you plan to use thermo compound between the heatsink and CPU. To test the VES 20, I installed the unit on a Pentium III-500. This Pentium III was a hand picked unit. It can run at 585Mhz with the stock heatsink at 2 volts. However, 620Mhz was out of the question for the stock Intel heatsink. The first thing I noticed with the VES 20 is that the system ran cooler than the stock Intel heatsink. With the Intel heatsink, the system temp measure 93 to 96F when running at 585Mhz. Once the VES 20 was installed, it drop down to 89 and never once went over 92F. Not bad at all. The unit is more noisier than the stock heatsink. However it's not really that noticeable. The case fans in the test system make more noise anyway. The question you're probably asking is will the VES 20 allow me to overclock the PIII-500 higher than 585Mhz? The answer is yes it can. As I have stated before, it's normally the L2 cache that prevents a PIII from reaching really high overclocked speed. With the slots in the VES 20, the fans are able to blow air on the L2 cache and cool them down. I was able to boot into Win 98 at 620Mhz with the VES 20. It wasn't that stable at first. The system would work find, but the instant I fire up Unreal it would kick me back to the Windows desktop within 1 loop of the Unreal timedemo. Then I remember I had the L2 cache latency set to 1. Backing down L2 latency to it's stock rating of 8 would allow it to do a few more loops and going to a L2 latency of 12 allow Unreal to run without any problems. However, Unreal ran faster at 585Mhz with a L2 latency set to 1 than it does at 620Mhz with the L2 latency set to 12. The reason I couldn't lower the L2 latency was because the fans are not powerful enough to cool the L2 cache at a 1 setting. More powerful fans would help. Or you could put some copper spacers between the L2 cache and heatsink to fill in the gap. Cooling by contact is always better than cooling by just blowing air. Just for comparison, at 620Mhz the stock Intel heatsink would lock up just as it's about to load Windows. Doesn't matter what the L2 latency was set at. Clearly the VES 20 is a much better heatsink than what Intel gives you. Priced at just $19.95 from the Cooler Guys or AMK Services, it's really a good value for the amount of performance. It easily out performed the stock Intel heatsink and allowed my PIII-500 to run at 620Mhz with a L2 latency set to 12. However, this makes the CPU no faster (maybe slower) than running at 585Mhz with L2 set to 1. So, would I recommend this cooler for your Pentium III? That really depends. I was left with some mixed feelings about it. I was disappointed that it wouldn't let me run my PIII-500 at 620Mhz with the L2 latency set to 1. This was something that the Global Win VEK 12 allowed me to do.
The VEK 12 is a SECC Pentium II cooler and wasn't designed to work with SECC2 Pentium IIIs. However it's very easy to modify so it will work with a Pentium III. The VEK 12 is allot bigger and use way more powerful fans than the VES 20. And it's only $2 more than the VES 20. I know, you're wondering what kind of mods does it take to make the VEK 12 work on a PIII-500. You'll just have to wait till I'm finish with Project 620 to find out. :-) My recommendation would be this. If you're willing to do a little mod to a Global Win VEK 12 to make it work with your Pentium III, I would go for that over the Global Win VES 20. If you just want a heatsink that you can slap on your P3 and go, then I can't think of many better Pentium III coolers than the Global Win VES 20. The Goods
The Bads
Our rating: 8/10 |
