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Socket A Cooling

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nty_don

New Member
Joined
Apr 7, 2009
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.
 
From what I think I remember, the force applied to the CPU comes from springs, not directly from torquing the fasteners. That being the case, the springs are not strong enough to hurt the core or the wafer as long as you load them evenly as you cinch them down. If you load one side fully and then the other, you could chip the core, however.
 
I my self have a socket A MOBO (dual CPU in-fact) and I will attest that the standard cooling options are.... week.

But as for putting to much pressure on the CPU...I know that it is a concern. But with good judgment of pressure you should be fine.
And from what I have seen with bolt through kits; they usually have some kind of spring mechanism that helps prevent over tightening. But each mount will be different.
 
A simpler solution might be to just slap an 80mm fan on the stock amd heatsink. Thats what I usually do and it works wonders!
 
I think it is already an 80mm fan. I know it's bigger than the fan on my Socket 754 box. So either the 754 has a 50mm fan (jet engine) and the A a 60mm, or the A already has an 80mm. Unfortunately the Socket A box has a bunch of stuff stacked on it, so I can't just go and measure the fan. I don't recall it looking 80mm big, but I haven't looked at it in a while.

So I guess if I want to do this project, I'll have to refresh my WC parts knowledge.:)
 
Im building another socket A rig for the fun of it, and I am also trying to think up a better solution than in my previous post. There arn't too many aftermarket options out there.
 
I made a custom air cooler for my Barton XP-M 2600+ that was easily oc'ed to 2.7GHz. The custom cooler was a huge 120x38mm 131CFM fan mounted onto a 120mm-80mm adapter, onto an 80mm-60mm adapter, onto a super-thick copper skivved 60mm heatsink. I taped the heatsink up, to make sure that the air could only enter through the fins. As a result, the fan sucked the bejesus out of that poor heatsink. I could feel hot air blowing upwards toward the ceiling. I had no problem overvolting it to a whopping 1.85v.

I think it was the best air cooler available at its time, for Socket A/462 cpu's. Thermalright came out with its first heatpipe cooler, that was used in my other rig (with DFI NF2 Ultra B), but my custom cooler beat it hands-down (on my Abit AN7).
 
What was the best aftermarket cooler for Socket A, or better to ask, what is the best cooler?
 
lol

that's about the only cooler for socket A I know about. Now, anyone knows something better then Typhoon?
 
What was the best aftermarket cooler for Socket A, or better to ask, what is the best cooler?

I believe it was the copper version Thermalright SLK-800 for a while, and then they came out with a 92mm version, I forget the model #. Regarding the OP's question, in my experience, you can put quite a bit of pressure on those cores. I remember when I first built my 2500+ system I had a lot of trouble mounting the HS to the CPU (it used clips instead of screws), and I'm sure I subjected it to high, uneven pressure in the process. It never cracked or chipped, though. Just use common sense and be careful, and you should be fine.
 
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