You know, FrozenCPU.com has one, and only one purpose in life – to sell cooling (fans, heatsinks, water cooling) and customization (case mods, LEDs, window kits) supplies to people with high performance computers, specficially Pentium4/Athlon/Itanic/Sledgehammer systems. So you’d think that the staff would make it their business to know a few things about cooling Pentium 4 and Athlon processors.
I went there today (and it’s a bit of a drive, about 20 minutes each way) to pick up some cooling supplies.
One of the more important things I needed was heatsinks and cooling fans for my dual AthlonMP1800+ computer, my main server which I’ve ranted about several times. When I told the salesguy (and since they’ve got such a small staff, I assume he’s probably one of the two prinicples in the organization) what I needed, he asked if it was a 603 or a 604 processor. I’d never heard of that, so I said I didn’t know. I thought all Althlons were basically standard Socket 7 processors, but I think I remember something about “Palamino” and “Thunderbird” cores although I could be wrong about that. I thought “604” meant the pre-G3 PowerPC chip. I tell him I’ll find out and come back on Monday.
So here it is, 6 hours later, and I’m finally at my parents place in Oshawa where I can finally look at /proc/cpuinfo on my computer, and it doesn’t say anything about this 603/604 business. So I do a quick google, and you know what I find? 603/604 are sockets for the Intel Xeon chips, not Athlons. I didn’t know that, because I have no exposure to Xeon chips, having all of my Linux and Windows boxes running AthlonXPs, AthlonMPs and Durons. But it’s not my business to know what heat sink goes with which processor, it was this guy’s. And he failed miserably.
I suppose if a wasted 40 minutes in the car listening to Al Franken reading “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” is the worst thing that happens in a day, then it’s been a pretty ok day, but I’m still peeved.