Dumb Geek Pulls Doozy: Athlon cooler

[flakbait]

Yesterday I went on over to Portland OR (sorry Deja, but blech!) with a buddy to get his current Tbird swapped out. It's a nice little thing, Socket A 900MHz, and he told me it was mine. Along with a 128 meg stick of SDRAM. When the geek popped the case we found TWO sticks of SDRAM. One PC100, one PC133, non DDR obviously. So I ended up with a cheap stick of 128 meg DDR made by Samsung. I won't complain cause it'll get this new rustbucket off the ground. To make a long story short: that geek yarfed the heatsink/fan off my new Tbird before he pulled it out. And refused to remount the thing due to transport problems. Something about being out of anti-static bags, or so he told me. There's no damage to the chip, or the heatsink, I just don't know how to stick 'em back together. Anyhoo, is there a way I (a novice) can remount that thing?


PS...
Bloom! I took two parts of your advice on mobo's and combined 'em (good experience with MSI and KT266a VIA chips). I'm now the proud owner of a red MSI K7T266 Pro2 mobo. It'll accept anything up to an Athlon XP 1800+ and 3 gigs of DDR RAM. No worries about upgrading soon eh?




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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think my maker wants to hear from me right now. I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond

[Camel]

http://www4.tomshardware.com/howto/01q1/010115/pcsystem-05.html#processor

Im pretty sure he used an AMD 800 for this article, sould be a good read for you.

[flakbait]

Thank you Camel! I'll snap up some of that cooling goo probably Saturday.

I noticed he said to close those L1 bridges manually with a lead (looked like a mechanical) pencil. Since mine are very open can I just use an off-the-shelf mechanical pencil?


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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb

[Camel]

You'd be better off asking some of the AMD guys, for the best ways to do this.

http://www.overclockers.com may help also.

[bloom25]

Don't close the bridges (if in fact they are opened) unless you want to be able to overclock by adjusting the multiplier.  (If you do, I don't use a pencil, I use conductive silver paint.)  Not all AMD tbirds had their bridges cut.  It's fairly obvious if they have been cut.

Mounting the heatsink is not hard, you just have to be careful.  First you need to remove any thermal pad or old thermal paste on the heatsink.  (Credit card works well for this, just don't use metal.)  Next you need to apply a very thin layer of paste to the CPU die itself.  Use a credit card or paper to smooth it out.  (Note, this layer should be very thin, basically just a film.)  Now GENTLY place the heatsink on the CPU socket (it's best to do this when the motherboard is not in the case).  Note that the heatsink has an area cut away on the bottom that allows the side of the socket with the lever to fit under it.  Now hook one side of the clip to the socket, and making ABSOLUTELY sure the heatsink is sitting flush on the die and not skewed to the side or tilted, depress the other side of the clip and latch it carefully to the socket.

I believe AMD has an article on their site as well...

[Camel]

Now your in good hands!

Bloom's suggestion is probably a more stable solution.

[flakbait]

Thanks to both of you guys! All I really need now is a bigger power supply (case has 250w, need 350w) and I can get started. The rest of the parts I need I'll probably snap up next month. Any recommendations in the vid and sound card departments? I already settled on a 30 gig HD, just don't know which brand to swipe.



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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"During the Battle of Britain the question 'fighter or fighter-bomber?'
had been decided once and for all: The fighter can only be used as a bomb carrier
with lasting effect when sufficient air superiority has been won." Adolph Galland

[Reschke]

Since you are going new on the video card look for a Ti4400 GeForce4 if you are going high end. I picked one up recently online for $275 (Abit Silurio version) and I had a GeForce2 GTS 32MB card in the system.

But it had been two years since I had upgraded the video in my machine. I had a VisionTEK Ti4400 on order last week but it was going to be another month before they received anymore to fulfill the backorders they had.

[Fatty]

Use good paste.  I dropped 20 degrees (F) simply by cleaning the old paste off and replacing with Artic Silver.  Nothing else changed.

With voltage increased and overclocking 200mhz now I'm still 10+ degrees cooler than I was with on default settings with generic thermal paste.

[Camel]

Best to look for a message board for MSI, and seek out the best soundcard for your board. You'll see reference to Creative SBlive, Game Theater, and Turtle Beach.

Hard Drives in a 30gig, look for atleast ata100 and 7200rpm, brands like IBM, WD, Maxtor.

I'd hold out as long as possible for the video, considering you'll be in the 1000mhz range after your O/C, I dont see the need for Gf4, watch prices on Gf3 ti200, Gf3 ti500, and Radion8500. Depends on the spare cheese you have.

128mb ram... not enough.

[flakbait]

Thanks again fellas!

Camel,
I know 128 isn't enough ram so I'm looking for a good brand I can snag from a local dealer. Crucial is something I'd swipe but no one around here has any. I thought about going for a 256 meg stick of DDR by Kingston. Ideas? Opinions?

Fatty,
rgr that. It turns out the case they recommended was wired wrong (2 pin power switch, mobo takes 3 pin) so while I'm getting a new case/power supply I'll snag a tube of Arctic Silver.

On vid cards: Since a GF4 is overkill at this point (no need for 200 fps) I'll pick up a Radeon 8500 instead.

Hard drive: After some hunting I found a WD Caviar 30.7 gig at CompUSA for $90. So that's what I'll get.

Sound: It's been known that the SB Live doesn't conform to PCI standards so I'm going for an Audigy of some sort. Maybe an MP3+ cause I know a place that stocks 'em for $70.



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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"With all due respect Chaplian, I don't think my maker wants to hear from me right now. I'm gonna go out there and remove one of His creations from this universe.
And when I get back I'm gonna drink a bottle of Scotch like it was Chiggy von
Richthofen's blood and celebrate his death."
Col. McQueen, Space: Above and Beyond

[-lynx-]

Flak - Crucial deliver free here in the UK. I ordered my 512MB in the afternoon on-line and it turned up the very next morning. Kingston is supposed to be good but they are a pricey lot...

[Lephturn]

Anyone mounting heatsink/fan units themselves should read Arctic Silver's instructions:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm