A quick fix to give you a very robust waterblock clip.
Tidal Pool’s waterblock clip is one of the best I have seen – very secure and easy to get on and off. One improvement I wanted was a clip that would use more than just the socket A’s center mounting lug; what’s great about the AMD’s socket A spec is that it has three mounting lugs.
Now, I take waterblocks on and off a lot for testing, so I get concerned about snapping off the lug through repeated use. I thought about a clip that would use more than just the center lugs and came up with the following idea.
It looks like a bird cage, but it’s REAL secure and I have a lot less concern about over-tightening with this clip. Using the thumbscrew helps in not tightening too much.
Making the center piece is real easy, assuming you have a die to tap the center hole. I used a small piece of 1/8″ aluminum plate 1″x2″ (admittedly not pretty – this was my first attempt; works fine so I kept it). The two farthest lugs measure about 1 1/16″ center-to-center; AMD’s specs measure it at 27.44mm (AMD’s spec sheet is HERE); use this for the centers of the two end holes.
Then drill the center hole midway between the two end holes and tap – I am using a 1/4-20 bolt. The two holes on each end are not tapped – drill these a little larger so you have some play to adjust the clip to the CPU’s center.
Once it’s finished, bolt the clips to the aluminum plate.
Adjusting the clip is not hard: I clipped it on without the center bolt, sighted through the center hole and adjusted the legs so that the center bolt is centered over the CPU. Then insert the center bolt, place the waterblock on the CPU and tighten it up.
This setup gives about as much mounting pressure as you would want for AMD CPUs. The Tidal Pool clips have a lot of headroom, so mounting peltiers etc. should not be a problem.
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