The Thermaltake Silver Orb is clearly the winner of the three coolers, but the Ice Cooler is close, extremely close I might add. BTW - all temperature's have been measured with a 27c ambient temperature in the closed PC Case. 

So what about overclocking that Thunderbird 700 I was talking about in the beginning of this article ? Well, with the Silver Orb it can run steady at 900 MHz, with the Vantec 850 MHz is stable but the maximum (900 locked up very occasionally). I had a small 'hope' that it would reach 1 Gigahertz, but hey .. I tried every combination of multiplier lock, FSB and voltage tweak, the CPU simply isn't capable of doing that kind of raw speed. 

Concluding -  When we wrap up this article we can make note of a few issues. To overclock a Socket-A CPU you need take note of several issues that need carefull consideration. First of all, a good mainboard is of course very important if you want to tweak your CPU. At this time ABit's KT7 (RAID) is the mother of all mainboards. Secondly the CPU. Earlier batches of Socket-A Thunderbird and Duron CPU's where where unlocked so the multiplier can be changed from within the mainboards BIOS. I was lucky and have such a CPU and it makes overclocking the CPU very easy. If your CPU is locked then there are several ways to unlock them. You can check this by watching closely to the ThunderBird/Duron processor and look at the sign L1. If all 4 bridges are soldiered then your CPU is unlocked ! 

If not ... Take a pencil and your CPU and read this article over at Tom's Hardware if it's not! Be warned though, only do this if you are sure what you are doing. Take a .05mm pencil or a pointy sharp wooden pencil (number 2).  Now, with calm an ease connect the dots of the L1 bridge and make a line between the dots (not too wide). When all L1 the bridges are closed your CPU will be unlocked :) If you are not into techie stuff then please don't try it at home and stick to FSB overclocking ..

Third and of course a very important is of course getting rid of heat. 

Both Vantec ($)18.5 and Silver Orb ($18) coolers are great value and will surely work great. They might be able to squeeze a few more MHz out of that CPU of yours, it sure did for mine. I'm running 200 MHz above the normal 700MHz limit. If you have a lot of capacitors surrounding your Socket-A then definitely go for Vantec's Ice Cooler, it's much easier to install and you won't have to bend those capacitors.

If you are in for a new fan then definitely visit Matt over at the Card Cooler who provided the fans. They offer excellent products and speedy shipping at a fair price.

You can buy those fans at The Card Cooler - www.cardcooler.com