The Alpha FC-PAL35 has a lot to live up to. The original Alpha Socket 7 heat sink was, and still is, a highly praised cooling product. But now there is a dire need for a `high-end' cooling products well suited for Flip Chip CPU cooling and beyond. The Alpha FC-PAL35 is a copper embedded heat sink with four plastic pegs for stabilizing FC-PGA CPU installations. but let's take a closer look now shall we?

Receiving an Alpha heat sink is always somewhat exciting. So much to see, so much to do! So let's have a gander as to what's inside the box. You get: 1 Alpha FC-PAL35 heat sink, 1 packet of Alpha heat sink paste, 1 clip, 4 washers, 4 screws, 1 intake cover (shroud,) 1 installation guide, and 1 YS. Tech 27.2 CFM 60 MM fan. Additionally, you get a cool Alpha sticker.

Appearance:

Alpha's dedication to workmanship and quality has always enabled them to produce heat sinks of exceptional quality and visual perfection. The heat sink is an all black, aluminum heat sink, with an embedded copper slug at the base. This is to perhaps harmonize the heat transfer capabilities of both metals. Copper absorbs heat faster, but retains it longer. Aluminum on the other hand absorbs heat less efficiently, but dissipates heat faster. I failed to mention this earlier. This unit is big and tall, therefore when installing with a Slot 1 Adapter board (like me,) make sure you can afford to give up the one or two DIMM slots that the heat sink and fan combo will almost inevitably block. In point of fact, installing this heat sink on my FC-PGA Celeron on an Asus adapter ended up blocking up one DIMM slot. Finally there are four plastic pegs on the base of the heat sink that do a great job of stabilizing the heat sink atop the FC-PGA CPU. Unfortunately, these 4 plastic pegs make it difficult to utilize peltier elements.

Installation:

1: Place the heat sink on a flat surface.
2: Push the retention clip into place.
3: Align the intake cover on top of the heat sink.
4: Place the fan on top of the intake cover. I have the fan blowing on top of the heat sink, whereas Alpha recommends having it suck air away from the heat sink - the choice is yours, but I always find a 1 degree Celsius advantage with the impingement setup.
5: Place one washer on top of each of the four holes atop the fan.
6: Insert the screws through the top of the washers, and then secure the whole assembly by tightening the screws.
7: Many people recommend putting the paste on the CPU contact area, but since that target zone is so miniscule (to easily apply a thin layer.) I opted to just apply a thin layer on the copper base of the heat sink.
8: Place the heat sink on top of the CPU, and secure the heat sink to the socket with the retention clip.
9: Plug the fan into the 3-pin fan connector on the motherboard.
10: Power the computer up, and have fun overclocking!

Now that all of the boring stuff is done with, let's get onto the temperature results!