Performance

Now its time for some abusing. The site has to live up to it's name right! Temperatures will be taken at idle 15 min after a fresh boot. Load temperatures will be taken after 30 minutes of running Folding@Home. Temperatures were taken with Motherboard Monitor 5.2.0.0. Room temperature was maintained at a steady 74F for testing. System specs are as follows...

• AMD XP 1600+ AROIA-Y
• Epox 8K3A+
• 512 Megs of Samsung Pc2700
• Western Digtial SE 120 Gig
• ATI Radeon 8500
• Hercules GTXP
• Arctic Alumina thermal compound

As most probably know, but for those of you who don't, the 8K3A+ reads the temps of the AMD XP's from the internal thermistor on the CPU itself and not the socket thermistor. Because of this the temps may seem a little on the high side. But its nothing to worry about. It is a more accurate way to read the temps than by reading from behind the chip as done on most pre-kt333 boards.

The Tundra 2 does very well. A Full overclocked load temp of 132F is a great temp to have on this motherboard. One thing I really liked about this cooler is the fan. It is fairly quiet for being a 34 CFM fan. So maybe the fin design does do some good!

With everything good though it seems as if there is some bad to it somewhere. The one thing that I didn't like but I've become custom to it is the single prong clip. I don't think it would take too much more R&D to add a 3 prong clip. With the amount of tension most of these clips have it would be a great way to save the lugs on the socket. I've broken a few myself in the past.

Overall AVC has a very good product with the Tundra 2. It has a sleek looking copper design, coupled with a cool looking fan! What more could you ask for in a heatsink. It really looks good inside of my window modded Chieftec case! Thanks goes out to AVC for sending us this great looking cooler!

As for where to buy the Tundra 2, go HERE. Depending on the retailer the Avalanche should be around $25-$30 and the Tundra 2 should be around $35-$40.

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