Installation/Setup

Installation

Metal clamps are used to attach the MC370-2 to the motherboard. When clamping the MC370 down, Swiftech recommends you apply pressure to the top of the MC370. In order to accomplish this effectively, it's best that the motherboard is removed from the case entirely. In addition, Swiftech recommends removing the fan from the heatsink before you clamp the MC370 down to the motherboard.

While clamping down the heatsink, it's possible to apply too much pressure to the tabs on the socket interface, causing them to break. Fortunately, the metal slide that houses the clamp can be adjusted to fit the second tab on each side of the socket interface, but if that second tab is broken, you'll be unable to attach the MC370 to the motherboard.

Careful, don't break that tab off!

Another possible danger is the close proximity of resistors to the socket interface. On some motherboards, you may have problems fitting the MC370 on the motherboard without hitting one of these resistors.

Watch those resistors!

Condensation

A major issue that should be dealt with when installing the MC370-1 or MC370-2 is preventing condensation from forming on or near the CPU. As I'm sure you can imagine, just a droplet of water could quickly ruin the rest of your day.

For this reason, Swiftech recommends filling the cavity in the socket interface with silicone. To top it off, Swiftech includes a 1" x 1" neoprene patch. Swiftech also recommends that the socket itself be sealed with silicone all around. (Effectively sealing the socket interface) To further combat condensation, the MC370-2 also comes with a 2.5" x 2.5" neoprene patch to fit underneath the socket interface on the underside of the motherboard.

A final Swiftech recommendation is to apply a thin coat of silicone to the edge of the processor. Once all the silicone is applied, you've essentially sealed the entire CPU and socket together, so don't expect to swap out CPU's every few minutes once everything is in place. (Although you can cut away the silicone fairly easily.)

Testing Setup

Rather than spit out overclocking results with various Celeron CPU's as we did in our last MC1000 review, we decided to take temperature readings from our Celeron 466 and 500MHz and post them here. Our Celeron 466 in particular tends to run hot, so we were eager to see how well the MC370-2 would keep it cool.

As a means of comparison, we threw in our modified Vantec heatsink/fan setup. Basically we took an oversized Vantec heatsink and threw a Global Win 60mm x 60mm fan on top. While our fan isn't as powerful as the MC370-2 fan, it's more powerful than the everyday CPU fan you find on most cooling products.

Our office environment isn't temperature controlled so we weren't able to include exact temperature settings, as unfortunately they tend to vary. (doh!) In addition the system wasn't tested inside a case, we tested it like everything else we test, out in the open!