Introduction

Stock coolers that come with CPU's, most people that want to push their systems don't even install them. When they bought their setups they also made sure they got an after market CPU cooler as well. I was moving some stuff around in my attic trying to find something and came across the box for my AMD Athlon X2 4200+ CPU, I had forgotten that the original CPU cooler was in there. I opened up the box and was looking closer at the stock CPU cooler, it is a big boy. I never installed it, when I bought my system I also purchased a Zalman CPU cooler to use, because I knew I was going to be pushing my system. Anyway, I decided to see just what the stock cooler could do. Even though this isn't exactly a review, I am going to do it in our standard review format.

First Looks

As I mentioned the stock cooler is quite large, it actually looks like something you might get as an after market product. It comes pre-applied with some thermal gunk that I will remove before using, substituting Arctic Silver Ceramique.

The base of the cooler is actually fairly well machined, not quite a mirror finish but better than some I have seen.

As you can see from the pictures the fins are very close together, and there are some rather large heat pipes connected to a nice thick copper heat plate. The cooler connects to the standard socket connection, to be connected to the bracket that comes standard on socket 939 motherboards.

The fan is a thin, 9 bladed style fan for more air flow.

For how big this cooler is, it is surprisingly lightweight. It is solidly made and can easily compare to other aftermarket coolers I have seen. Now let's move on to the testing section and see just what it can do.