When Intel's Coppermine Pentium IIIs debut later this month they will match the Athlon's performance when compared at identical clock speeds, though the Athlons will likely be more cost effective with lower price tags for some time to come.

One of our favorite aftermarket heatsink companies, Net-N-Dude, supplies the Glacier 4500 cooler/heatsink that Disruptor buyers can use to overclock their Athlon CPU should they opt to purchase a new ASUS K7M Athlon board with their PC (more on this in a moment). GamePC opted to use the Glacier based on the excellent product line Net-N-Dude offers, it's no coincidence to find one of the coolers in this well thought out PC.

With three fans and a good heat sink area density the Glacier 4500 is a strong contender for being the most effective SECC CPU cooler on the market.

Our Disruptor came equipped with the SD-11 mainboard from FIC, which is a Slot-A Athlon compatible design.

In our experience we've found the SD-11 to be a good quality board, although without any ability to control the Athlon CPU's speed settings it's a little bland.

All that has changed this week as GamePC took delivery on their first batch of ASUS K7M Slot-A boards, which feature being able to directly control the Athlon CPU's clock multiplier through the mainboard's BIOS.

We highly suggest buyers opt for the similarly priced K7M mainboard over the SD-11 mainboard, as we're sure you'll want to overclock your Athlon 600 to 650MHz as soon as possible.

On a final note, we'd like to point out that the much ballyhooed 'Intel Conspiracy Theory' (in which certain individuals believed we'd never see any good quality Athlon mainboards due to Intel allegedly pressuring the Taiwanese mainboard vendors regarding their Athlon support) dissolved as soon as the K7M appeared on American shores.

It's surprising the lengths some will go to in the quest to generate false controversy, but the presence of the K7M serves notice that regardless of which company manufacturers a strong CPU, Taiwan will indeed support it once it sells enough units as the Athlon now has.