On Tuesday 03 February 2004 05:03 pm, John Richard Smith wrote:
> No mine is a heat transfer problem that I want to improve.I
> think the 7CM fan provides enough volume of air but the heat is
> not being transfered quickly enough to the airflow.
> That's why I am considering a copper base heatsink, but it's
> nice to hear from people who have experienced these things
> ahead of me. I've never used a copper based heatsink. It seems
> to me these heatsinks have a terribly difficult job to do, the
> cpu which is only about 10 mm square generates a lot of heat
> and that has to be whipped away pronto through solid metal. I
> guess the fins have to be really cold to generate a cross flow
> of heat energy. It's incredible it works at all.
> If your interested to know more about the two heatsinks I
> mention above just type the model number into google.
>
> John
IME, case air flow is much more important than the cpu
heatsink/fan used, or whether it's copper or aluminum. The main
reason to use thermal grease instead of a thermal pad, is the
pads deteriorate over time. The hotter the cpu, the faster they
fail. I've even seen some that were burned to a crisp.
My current cpu is an XP 3000+, default is 2166Mhz. I had it
oc'd to 2366Mhz and 1.75Vcore for several months, solid as a
rock. Usin an el cheap $5 Speeze aluminum cooler that came
bundled with the cpu/ motherboard. At 100% load it never got
over 48C. Generic thermal grease, I've never used the kiddie
popular expensive stuff like Artic Silver.
Unfortunately the system became very unstable. I had to
underclock it to 1.4Ghz and it'd still error, freeze, lockup, or
random reboot itself. I endured that for quite a while till I
settled on the (Aopen) motherboard as the culprit. First
component I've ever ruined in many years of oc'ing to the max.
When I bought a new (Asus) motherboard, I included a $30 K7
Volocano+ Xaser Edition (p/n A1725) solid copper cooler with a
80x80x25 mm fan on it with the order. It comes with an optional
fan speed control which I didn't use. Running the fan at 100% rpm
all the time. I also keep fan bios settings at 100% as I did
with the previous motherboard. I used the grease that came with
the Volcano. This is the first time I've ever used anything but
a cheap generic cooler. It's also the first copper one.
The cpu is now oc'd to 2250Mhz (13x173FSB), 1.67 Vcore and
at 100% load the cpu never gets over 48C. IOW's the same damn
temps I got with the cheap aluminum cooler. Case is still cooled
as it was before, it's open on both sides and on top. Necessary
as it's against an outside wall in a cubby hole underneath the
(booth style) table and seats I have in my travel trailer.
For cooling, the most important requisite is to keep case
temp at room temp. Any decent cooler will do, as long as it's
firmly and squarely in contact with the greased cpu die.
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
