Being a computing enthusiast...I've done quite a few odd things. Some have laughed, some have just looked at me with blank stares. You know who you are. But every once in a blue moon, one project makes it big.
The P4 computer
For a while, I was running an Intel 1.6GHz P4a processor on a Asus P4S533 motherboard (SIS 533 chipset). Now this processor for the time was a great overclocker..and I was mildly successful at it too. I had her up to 2.4GHz. She was fast. I was also using stock cooling, though I must say the heatsink provided by Intel was suprisingly very well made. Even at these overclocked speeds in a fairly warm room...it would not go above 50 Celcius...at least after I got done with it.
After constructing this rig, I had noticed that the airflow, despite the extra fans, was not correctly dissipating the heat away from the motherboard and that a hot spot was created above the video card, but below the processor. I got to looking at this and an idea hit me that worked! I removed the fan that came with the heatsink. When I did this, the heatsink latching mechanism no longer functioned, since the the over-center latch applied pressure through the fan to the heatsink. A spacer was needed. Rummaging through fraternity brother's desk drawers I found two of those pink block erasers and two PCI slot covers. Cutting the covers in half worked out excellent. The latch worked perfectly and applied just enough pressure to the heatsink. Next, I rubber banded (the worst part of the design) a standard 80mm fan directly above the heatsink blowing down just as the retail fan did. I then bolted another fan through the pre-existing holes to the fan that was rubberbanded. This whole fan setup was rotated 45 degrees so that the bolted fan was sucking the hot air right out of the pocket! Brilliant! This brought the temps down 5 to 10 degrees. It may not sound like alot, but it kept the machine stable and did not cost me a dime extra.
Video card from heaven!
The following is a cut/paste from an old web page I wrote as a freshman in college back in 1999. Amusingly, in 2001, I was emailed from a gentleman that apparently didn't get the joke. This is what developed:
How many of you serious gamers out there still have one of those old ISA or PCI video cards?? Well I have a deal for you! You can salvage those old cards and make fortunes off of them. How the hell can I do that, you ask? Follow the steps below and you'll end up with one bitchin' card from Heaven.
Step 1: As we all know, one part of the card that really really speeds up a modern video card is the speed of the memory. Technology in the olden days was very crude and so the memory was pitiful. To upgrade your old tired card all you need to do is pop off all the larger sized chips off of the card. It is easier done with a screwdriver, but butter knives, pocket knives, or small saws work just fine.
Step 2: Now that your card is ready for upgrade, you need to go get your video memory. You may ask, "What kind do I need?" Here's your answer...DDR!!! DDR memory is the new wave of economic memory. For you more hardcore gamers, you may want to get some RamBus, but this is way more expensive.
Step 3: You have your new memory and your isa/pci card is now ready for upgrading. This is where it gets teknical. Find some tape. Scotch tape is sucky, masking tape is better, however the master of all tape is the 100mph duct tape!! Get some!! Now take your memory and line them up with the old pin holes/leads. Cut off a strip of your tape so it is about 3 feet in length, and start wrapping the card vertically as it would be viewd sitting on the motherboard. If you tried the other way, you wouldn't get the monitor cable hooked up.
Step 4: It is done!! You just made one super kick-ass video card that you prolly bought 8 years ago! You will now be the envy of all that are around you. Go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back.
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Hint: By my method of installation of the DDR super fast memory, there is no limit to the amount of memory you can have. I personally modified mine to 243MB of DDR memory. Just make sure all the pins/leads line up correctly.
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I saw your little [old webpage]... PFFT. U expect me to believe that!! hahaha!p
You know nothing of electronics... or anything else for that matter... do us all a favor, and flunk out o skool. For gods sake you said use a butter knife!! hahah! If you only knew that a hot air gun like a paint stripper gun (not a hair dryer u boob) would remove any surface mounted chip with ease. I can't believe they let you people put into the world, and call you edumacated. UMR... hahahah! thats even better than the butter knife!
Let me see you on CS and I'll frag u real nice...poser.
Come play on a real server:
counterstrike.inet.net.nz:27015
with your taped up v card. Foo
Signed
MONKEYBOY a.k.a the G.R.I.V.E.T.C.S
The Sanding
Years ago, I had jumped ship from a really nice GF2 MX (original MXs) to an ATI Radeon video card. It worked well with my games, but at this stage, I wanted to overclock everything. So I broke out PowerStrip that allowed a person to change GPU and Mmemory speed settings without having to alter the video card's firmware/BIOS. It eventually turned out that the memory chips was the limiting factor due to heat. Easy way to solve this problem was the addition of heat.
With this in mind, let's take a look at the construction of memory chips. At least at the time, memory chips had two traits that made them undesireable to mount a heatsink on them. First, they had a slight bowl curvature to them. So if you did put a heatsink there, the heat would have to either travel a good distance through air or travel through a lot of thermal grease. Secondly, when manufactured, the top has small bumps and grooves from the moulding process. The solution to this is lapping. Specifically, the sanding of a surface with finer and finer grits of sandpaper, preferably wet/dry sandpaper.
This solution now brings another problem. How do you sand such a small surface and have it flat when you are done? The solution I used was a small square piece of glass that Miller Glass of Rolla, MO sold to me for 50 cents. The idea was to wrap the sandpaper around the piece of glass and make small circular movements to give a nice finish on the pastic/epoxy memory chip. This worked well for the first two chips. On the third chip (top horizontal chip on gpu side), my finger went a little too far to the right and the glass see-saw'd off the chip and the other end struck a small resistor. Oh Shit. At this point, I was sanding without water, so I blew all the dust off and tried the video card in my PC. Nothing.
Upon further inspection, the piece I had inadvertantly sanded was a zero ohm resistor. Well if it is zero ohm, why not use a piece of wire? So I broke out my soldering iron and soldered a longish piece of wire across the resistor. It worked! Now I had this 2 inch piece of wire hanging off this video card and it didin't look very good. So I unsoldered the wire and the broken resistor. Next, I snipped a piece of wire just long enough to go across the leads on the pcb. I soldered it on...and..nothing. Turns out, I must have heated up the pcb too much and some internal solder must have melted and short-circuited to another lead/path.
I went out and bought a 40 dollar replacement from a guy in Alaska. I didn't attempt another sanding.
Mayo with your AMD?
Shortly after the colocated server was upgraded to the NF2 motherboard, I brought the NF1 home and do some testing. At this time of year, it was pretty cold outside, so without a case, I put all the parts on a workbench in the garage and just connected everything. Everything was assembled except for the last part, the heatsink. I had no thermal grease on hand but I really wanted to get it online that night.
I had remembered an article where some crazy guy had tested several household products for their thermal conductivity. His results hinted that compounds that had a lot of water worked best, but only lasted 3 days. Well...I didn't need to be using it that long anyway, so I went into the house to see what I could find. In the article, one of the best compounds used turned out to be toothpaste. I didn't like the sound of that, so I went into the fridge. Mayonaise! It would be perfect for getting into the small cracks.
I applied just a little bit of mayo to the processor and put the heatsink on. After about 5 minutes of operation, all was well. The heatsink was taking heat, so far so good. After 20 minutes, temps were still fine. Now with some solid confidence, I started Prime95 to really get the heat going and max out the processor. Now granted the garage was around 50 Farenheit, the processor only went up to 40 Celcius under this load. This was a great experiment.
On a side note, do not stand barefoot on a concrete floor and touch even the outer casing of a power supply. Not harmful, but not pleasent either!