Before the days of the Food & Drug Administration and before the days of extreme governmental regulation of the products that would make it to the market in the US it was almost encouraged to market your own "cure-all" get rich quick products to take advantage of the "ignorant" consumer. In the early 1900's products ranging from pills that would cure cancer to drinks that would make you smarter found their way into the hands of the uninformed consumer. This has unfortunately been the case with most CPU cooler manufacturers in recent times, with the general trend of thought being that the more fans present on a heatsink, the higher you can push the limits of your processor. While this can be called a notably simplified rule of thumb for cooling, it is far from the truth, and unfortunately, many unsuspecting buyers are falling for it.

The introduction of Intel's Celeron processor in 1998 brought new meaning to the word "overclocking." While the relatively small overclocking market nearly fainted at the sight of the original 266MHz Celeron processors running at 400MHz+, the even more popular Celeron 300A running at 450MHz captured more attention than any single x86 processor among those that were interested in harnessing the power of the overclocking wonder-chip. But as the old axiom has come to show us all time and time again, what goes up must come down. In this case, the once almost guaranteed overclockable Celeron 300A processors are growing scarce in the market and are quickly being replaced by the relatively untouchable 366 and 400MHz processors which seem to max out at around the 450MHz mark.

With the difficulty of finding Celeron 300As that overclock to 450MHz any more, most online vendors have turned to testing their own Celeron 300As at 450MHz and selling overclocked 450MHz bundles at a premium price, while still keeping the cost lower than that of a Pentium II 450. After a few more weeks of shortages, those 450MHz combos began to die out, and users turned to other, more unorthodox methods of getting the most bang for their buck at 450MHz from a sub $80 processor. Most CPU cooler manufacturers quickly picked up on the vulnerability of users that would do anything to hit that 450MHz mark with their Celeron 300A processors, and thus the race for the most obnoxiously large Celeron cooling heatsink/fan combo had begun.

Net-N-Dude, one of the pioneers of the multiple fan Celeron cooling solution, released their Glacier 4500C product a while back. The Glacier 4500C features triple 4500 RPM cooling fans, and a full sized heatsink that fits over the entire SEPP Celeron card. Since the only part of the Celeron generating heat is the processor itself, the large heatsink allows for the heat generated by the processor to be quickly spread out and removed via the three 4500RPM fans. The fans then take in cool air from the case and use it to funnel the rising heat off of the heatsink. The problem with this design was the fact that although the top of the processor was being cooled quite effectively, the processor still generated enough heat to cause instability and therefore another method of heat removal was necessary.

The beauty of the "naked" SEPP card design of the Celeron is that the backside of the processor is exposed, allowing for additional cooling to be clamped on to the rear of the processor card, making a "Celery sandwich" out of the processor between the two cooling methods. Net-N-Dude now offers an add-on to their Glacier 4500C called the Arctic cap, which is essentially a Socket-7 heatsink/fan without the clamps that attaches itself to the rear of the processor card.

The Arctic cap, retailing for about $12 from www.net-n-dude.com (the manufacturers) is an add-on to the Glacier 4500C alone, however it can be purchased with a new Glacier 4500C cooler for around $45. The cap attaches to the rear of the processor via a relatively simple clamp that allows it to attach on to the exposed pillars of the Glacier 4500C's heatsink. The arctic cap essentially takes the place of the plastic back plate that normally clamps the Glacier 4500C to the Celeron processor. Due to its prime placement on the opposite side of the processor, the cap helps remove a considerable amount of heat and definitely improves the temperature of an already hot CPU.

The documentation (if you can really call it that) that Net-N-Dude supplies with the Arctic Cap combo is quite poor, and the diagrams are relatively weak in aiding novices in the assembly/attachment of the heatsink/fan combo. While it may not seem like much those users that have had experience with Celeron processors, think back to the first time you ever built your own system or performed your own processor upgrade. Chances are that you were at least as nervous as most novices would be when installing this unique contraption on their newly purchased processors.

The four fans (three on the Glacier 4500C + one on the Arctic Cap) receive their power through two 3-pin motherboard power connectors and two 5-pin hard drive power connectors. The 2/2 power supply configuration takes into account the fact that very few motherboards have more than 2 on-board connectors. In spite of this attention to detail, expect the wires around your Glacier 4500C combo to get a bit messy, as the pass through power supply connectors can be a bit tedious to work with.

How far can you really expect to take today's Slot-1 Celeron processors?

Was AnandTech's experience with the Glacier 4500C Arctic Cap combo a success? Well, it wasn't as big of a success as it was hyped up to be. The Glacier 4500C Arctic Cap combo did decrease the CPU temperature of AnandTech's 300, 333, 366, and 400MHz Celeron A processors by a noticeable margin, and it did manage to increase stability in those cases where the temperature of the CPUs approached the mid to upper 40's (:C). Unfortunately, the combo did very little for the overclockability of AnandTech's ABIT BX6 Revision 2.0 test system.

The 300A test system still made it up to 103MHz x 4.5 - 464MHz (504MHz wouldn't boot into Windows 98, even at a 2.2v core voltage setting) just as it had before with the standard Glacier 4500C cooler as well as with a standard Cooler Master Celeron cooler. The 333A managed to boot up at 500MHz, however that success did not last too much longer as the system was not reliable enough to be considered a viable option for extensive usage.

The 366 and 400MHz parts were quite a distance from hitting those 550MHz and 600MHz marks, and their stability at all other overclocked speeds using the 75/83MHz FSB was hardly a change from the previous levels without the Arctic Cap add-on.

The only users that would benefit from the Arctic Cap add-on are those users that have 300A or 333A processors that can run at 450/500MHz however are still unstable during normal or extensive usage at those speeds. The Arctic Cap would most likely help improve stability in cases such as the semi-stable 300/333 processors, however other than that, the Arctic Cap is little more than a $12 add-on that adds to the already noisy computer sitting at your desk.

The final word? The $45 spent on a Glacier 4500C/Arctic Cap is more than the price difference between a Slot-1 300A and a Slot-1 366A. With the 366A almost guaranteed to work at 413MHz (75MHz x 5.5) and with the 366A having a good chance at hitting 458MHz (83.3MHz x 5.5), you're better off going with a 366A from the start than wasting your time on a 300A with a huge cooling contraption. The performance difference between a 300A at 450MHz and a 366A at 413MHz is about as noticeable as a 2 fps improvement in Quake 2, because that is exactly the type of performance difference you'll be getting.