Conductive Ink Tip for Non-Surgeons

Or maybe not. I’m not the most experienced overclocker in the world.
I did ruin a perfectly good Duron 800 a couple weeks ago, though.

Like many people, my hands aren’t the steadiest in the world. So
although I had a ‘micro-tip’ conductive pen to unlock the CPU
multiplier on my replacement Duron 800, I found it extremely
difficult to apply the ink accurately enough so that the traces were
totally separate, i.e. no shorts between bridges. And crossing
traces can ruin a perfectly good CPU. The highest accuracy I had was
putting some ink on the end of a toothpick and trying to apply it to
the L1 bridges.

But I still wasn’t satisfied because I couldn’t make the traces thin
enough to feel comfortable; they always had kind of a ‘globby’ feel to
them. Then I stumbled upon something that helped a ton:

First, get some rubbing alcohol and pour just a bit into a bowl or cup
of some kind. Then take a business card and either dip an edge in it
so one edge is damp with rubbing alcohol, or wet a paper towel with
the rubbing alcohol and apply it to the edge of the business card.

So now you have a business card that has rubbing alcohol along one
edge. Run that thoroughly damp edge between the bridges. It will
clean away any conductive ink that could cause a short between
traces. You might try thinner paper, but I found a business card to
be stiff enough and just thin enough to work well for me.

You can also do some fine cleaning by dipping the end of a toothpick
in the rubbing alcohol. Not as good for cleaning between bridges
like the business card, but it will clean away stray ink fairly
precisely.

People experienced in AMD overclocking probably either know this
technique already or something similar (probably more effective), but
I thought just in case I would pass it along.

Jim McHie, Jr.


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