Athlon Heatsink recommendations

[SteveC]

Hello to one and all!

Right, I need some help. At the moment, I have a coolermaster (can't remember which one, but I think it's a CB5-5K12 ?) anyway, it's meant to be pretty good - it's a copper base with copper 'pipes' running up through a load of 'fins' with a fan blowing across the fins. However, it cools my CPU at default clocking, but when I overclock I easily to reach 50 deg C and then I begin to get problems...

This heatsink gets a review here ( http://www.hexus.net/cm_hp.shtml )

I have a 1Gig Tbird on an Asus A7V.

Does any one have any recommendations?

Also, at a local computer shop where I work, we are building more and more 1Gig and higher athlon machines. There are usually in Midi Tower Cases. Only problem is, is that especially on 1.1Gig and higher athlons, they over heat! They quickly reach 52 deg C and crash!
We currently have been trying out the extremely noisy GlobalWin FOP38 (46dB!!) but even they're not good enough.

A review here ( http://www.hexus.net/fop38.shtml ) reckons it's good, but they use artic silver compound... We don't use any extra heatsink transfer compound apart from what comes attached to the base of the heatsink... could that be it?

Should I use this artic silver compound too?

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[This message has been edited by SteveC (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Ant]

I've just got a SuperOrb, unfortunately I don't have my new Atlon CPU yet so haven't tested it out I was going to go with FOP38 but heard they were very noisey, I've got to have something quiet, I already get nagged because my keyboard is too loud!

[Thundrchez]

You absolutely positively have to use thermal grease. That will probably be enough of a trick to get your CPU temperature down to a reasonable level.

I use an Alpha PAL6035 and arctic silver on my oc'd 950 tbird. After doing some intense 3D gaming, a quick reboot to look at the CPU temp in bios shows that it is just below 40C, maybe 38 or 39C.

[This message has been edited by Thundrchez (edited 03 January 2001).]

[Novdid]

I second the vote for the alpha.

But I would rather go for the Kanie Hedgehog if it weren´t that heavy. It can crush a cpu quite easily and even rip a socket off if your'e not careful enough when you move the case around. But then again the hedgehog is the best heatsink.

[SteveC]

Oh yeah, we use heatsink compount - we're not that useless! But only the normal white stuff (no, not milk )

We've just this second ordered some Arctic Silver and we'll see if that does the trick.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[ALBPM]

Steve, just out of curiosity does the fan blow or suck the air through the Coolermaster heat pipe heat sink??? If it's blowing turn it around so it sucks air out and see if that takes a few degrees off the Temp.

Paul

[SteveC]

Hi Paul,

Already tried that - It was blowing upwards from the bottom through the fins, and then I changed it so it sucked upwards from the top and it didn't make any difference.

Anyone know where I can get more powerful (but not any bigger) fans from?

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[RoGuE]

I'd recommend the TaiSol CGK742092 - very good cooler, and not too noisy.


Otherwise, my second choice would be the Chrome Orb.

[This message has been edited by RoGuE (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Grego]

I'm using the alpha 6035 for my tbird together with normal thermal paste, I will however order arctic silver compound, since I have read that it will lower the temp up to as much as 4 degrees celcius.

[SteveC]

As I'm stuck with my original heatsink (the copper pipe coolermaster) and no arctic silver till tomorrow at the earliest, I've tried adding an extra fan (a better one than before) and sanded down the copper base and used some fresh silicone based heatsink compound (cheapo)... I can now run at 11x105 = 1155Mhz. Under full load (SETI@Home) the CPU runs at 53degC. This has helped as before I'd have crashed before running this long.
No load (just windows 2000 and IE5 running, it's about 50degC.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to try out a SuperOrb with Arctic silver compound...

With my current setup, 12x100 Win2k fails to boot with blue screens. Any ideas on how I might get it to boot successfuly? I'm already at 1.85V and I'm not sure I want to mod the mainboard just yet.

Some pics:

The heatsink with one fan removed:



The cleaned up bottom of the copper base and the freebie heatsink compound crap that came free with an old heatsink:



The fitted unit:



The BIG fan at the top/back of my case (the rotating blades are the same size of a CD). This really keeps my drives cool!





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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[SteveC]

Yup, me again!

Just a couple more things:

With the case lid on, that big fan reduces the CPU And chipset temp by 3 degrees C.

I got a bit of a dilemma. With the current setup, I can have the bus speed at 100Mhz and have the 'System Performance Settings' option at 'Optimal' and RAM at CAS2 which gives me an extra 43Mb/sec in the SiSoft Sandra memory benchmark (~10%), compared to if I have the bus speed at 105Mhz, I am forced by the BIOS to set the 'System Performance Settings' to 'Default'...

What's better - 10% faster memory speed, or 5% faster CPU clock speed?

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[This message has been edited by SteveC (edited 02 January 2001).]

[Indiana]

Originally posted by SteveC:

What's better - 10% faster memory speed, or 5% faster CPU clock speed?

I'd go for the memory-speed, I found this have the larger impact, but then this will depend heavily on the used applications.
With games you should probably prefer the faster CPU-clocking, while most "Office-type", image-, sound- or video-editing applications are quite sensitive to mem-performance.

I was lucky when buying my RAM, it works up to a FSB of 110 with CAS2 and the ABits "turbo" settings, that makes a mem-speed of 110+(110/3) = ~147MHz (although they were cheap and only CAS3 rated at 133MHz).

With those settings (FSB110, multiplier 9.5) Sandra reports
<img SRC="http://www.indiana.claranet.de/SandraMEM.png"


This is about the highest score I've ever seen Sandra report, except for the P-IV numbers, of course... (no wonder at a FSB of 400MHz)

[ALBPM]

Yes, use the Arctic Silver..... TIMs or Pads are worthless. Also lap the heat sinks with 300 or 400 grit carbide wet/dry sand paper. Then finish them off with 1500 or 2000 grit carbide sand paper

Try the Hedgehog with the Delta fan or Y.S. TECH 27 CFM fan... no less than a 27 CFM fan. Also the Taisol CEK734092 looks good for socket A.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...oolers_18.html

Paul


[This message has been edited by ALBPM (edited 02 January 2001).]

[ayoub_ibrahim]

if you remove the thermal pad & use some heat transfer compound(arctic silver if you can splash out for the best,maplins own is ok!)instead, you should find a good cpu temperature drop.

[SteveC]

Is the TermalTake SuperOrb any good?

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"