When gravity yoinks your heatsink

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

COMPUTER: clunk
(screen goes blank)

ME: That can’t be good.

{ odor of burned plastic }

ME: Golly. What could that be?

As I open the case, I’m thinking the drive is gone. Instead I see a block of aluminum (with a fan attached) resting awkwardly on my video card. Good Grief! My razzafraggen heatsink somehow detached from my CPU.

I stared at it a while, dumbfounded. Then I saw a small plastic tab sitting next to the heatsink, on one side. Then, as sure as an apple falling and bonking me on the head, I figured it out:

The heatsink had a clip that attached at two points to the same socket as the CPU. Gravity kept tugging, and one of the cleats failed, and the CPU was doomed to burn. As it was an AMD 1Ghz CPU, I held little hope, citing the plastic odor (never a good thing).

Here’s a site that compares two Intel processors and two AMD thingies:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20010917/

It’s amazing how one Intel chip can at least -run- (albeit slowly) without any cooling, while both of the AMD’s perish (one dramatically, with smoke. There’s videos at the site).

I’m lucky. I was able to boot the box up if I pressed the heatsink on top of the CPU. If I let go - the temps went from 30C to 40C till the box froze (irony intended)

Today I bought a new heatsink with clips that grab all three cleats on the sides of the CPU socket (two on the handicapped side).

Check out your motherboards. Falling heatsinks are never a good thing.

Gravity, be darned.

2

Gotta agree.

Gravity is the only thing that brings me down.

3

Newton = The Man. He’s always keeping me down.

4

So you can’t get cold water out of a heatsink? Is that how it works? Not even a “C” tap? That would be handy if you drink a lot of tea. You’d always have hot water on demand.

5

“When gravity yoinks your heatsink”

Wm. Shakespeare, A Microsoft Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene III.

6

Gravity does not exist. The earth just sucks…

I just brought down my AMD CPU temp from 60’ish to 42’ish by adding in an extra fan blowing directly onto the CPU. My poor PC sounds like a windtunnel now (including CPU and video card fans there is 7 fans running in my PC) and my computer room is always 3-4 degrees C warmer than the rest of the house.

7

Anonymous, dude, that’s one whopping great system of yours. I thought five fans was a lot.

Those CPU’s working at 100% much? Rendering animations are you?

Yeah, a system like that will definitely throw out a lot of heat. Just ask my cube neighbors.

8

Dangit, this isnt about Battletech? :confused: …carry on.