Yes, this is a pointless endeavor, and a waste of money. Save me the lecture.
So I have an old rig with an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) on an A7N8X motherboard. I was thinking I should see how far I can push the CPU, for fun. Right now it's being cooled by the stock aluminum AMD HSF. The motherboard has mounting holes, but I can't even find a decent looking air cooler. They're all clones of the stock heatsink, which does not look adequate for a 68w CPU. C2D is a 65w CPU and it has a massive stock heatsink in comparison, as well as dumping its heat to a larger surface area; the Athlons have that tiny little die. I could use a Swiftech Apogee GT, which supports Socket A as long as there are mounting holes, so I'm good there. A pump, tubing, 120mm radiator, etc. wouldn't run too much, and I could reuse some of the stuff if I ever decide to do watercooling on this computer.
My main concern is the actual mounting of the waterblock (or HSF if someone can find me a place to buy a real one for Socket A). I must confess I've never built an Athlon XP system. I bought the 2500/A7N8X preassembled and built the rest myself. I did this because I heard it was very easy to crack the die when mounting the HSF, and I was only 13 at the time I bought this, so $300 (or whatever it cost, I forget) was a lot of money. I know now that it's not that hard as long as you do everything properly, but back then I assumed you could mess stuff up bad even if you did everything exactly as the manual said. However, I imagine a waterblock would bring the danger back, since it's bolted to the board, and there is nothing to protect the die from too much mounting force. So does waterblock installation on a Socket A chip carry a high chance of killing the CPU? I don't care if I kill the chip with too much voltage, but I'd be ****ed if I wrecked it before I even powered it on. Even if I have no use for it.
So I have an old rig with an Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) on an A7N8X motherboard. I was thinking I should see how far I can push the CPU, for fun. Right now it's being cooled by the stock aluminum AMD HSF. The motherboard has mounting holes, but I can't even find a decent looking air cooler. They're all clones of the stock heatsink, which does not look adequate for a 68w CPU. C2D is a 65w CPU and it has a massive stock heatsink in comparison, as well as dumping its heat to a larger surface area; the Athlons have that tiny little die. I could use a Swiftech Apogee GT, which supports Socket A as long as there are mounting holes, so I'm good there. A pump, tubing, 120mm radiator, etc. wouldn't run too much, and I could reuse some of the stuff if I ever decide to do watercooling on this computer.
My main concern is the actual mounting of the waterblock (or HSF if someone can find me a place to buy a real one for Socket A). I must confess I've never built an Athlon XP system. I bought the 2500/A7N8X preassembled and built the rest myself. I did this because I heard it was very easy to crack the die when mounting the HSF, and I was only 13 at the time I bought this, so $300 (or whatever it cost, I forget) was a lot of money. I know now that it's not that hard as long as you do everything properly, but back then I assumed you could mess stuff up bad even if you did everything exactly as the manual said. However, I imagine a waterblock would bring the danger back, since it's bolted to the board, and there is nothing to protect the die from too much mounting force. So does waterblock installation on a Socket A chip carry a high chance of killing the CPU? I don't care if I kill the chip with too much voltage, but I'd be ****ed if I wrecked it before I even powered it on. Even if I have no use for it.