Preventing Multia Heat Death

Anyone remember these old things, from 1993? Well I've happened to come into possession of 4 of them. They are DEC Alpha Multia UDB VX40s. I've read all over the place about Multia Heat Death cause by the **** poor heat sinks that came stock and the stock fan inside the unit is prone to dieing as well.

If no one remembers, the Alpha CPU is no flipchip in a socket, it's soldered to the board. So if it fries, I have to get it off and go on a witch hunt trying to find a 166Mhz Alpha CPU.

I have found only one place on the web that sells an upgraded Multia heatsink, now with fan. Lucky for me, the site they don't know what it was made for so the slashed the price to $4.95.



As you can see, it's no ordinary HSF. Those holes are where the two studs on the Alpha CPU fit. I still do not feel totally confident in that heatsink, it's made of the same lightweight aluminum that makes the stock one so ineffecient.

Anyone have any ideas? I was thinking a block of copper down to a machinist shop and have them fashion me a waterblock with holes for the studs on the CPU. What do you guys think?

~Redneck Tech~

Hmmm, that HSF doesn't have any visible clips. Maybe you can just drill the very same mounting holes onto a larger Socket A heatsink and use it on your Alpha instead. If you know many hardcore O/Cers, you'll find it easy to get second-hand Socket A HSFs 'cause these fellas will be constantly upgrading HSFs. As for making a water block with the two holes in it, I think it'll be difficult to mill the inner chamber recess around the mounting holes unless you plan to implement some kinda semi-direct-die water cooling, ie. epoxy the whole waterblock (that has the two holes) to the CPU so that water doesn't leak out from the two holes and you can modify any existing waterblock for this purpose.