Installing A Giant Heatsink

[braincell]

So I built a new Core 2 Quad computer in a nice Cooler Master case with 120 mm fans, also a Cooler Master power supply with a 120 mm fan. Right away I noticed that the tiny fan on the stock Intel CPU heatsink was really loud; not only this but it makes a tone which would clash with my music!

Clearly I needed to buy a new heatsink with a 120 mm fan. I called the dude at http://www.frozencpu.com. I was particularly concerned with getting a heatsink which fits on my motherboard. My Gigabyte motherboard has heatsinks on it surrounding three sides of the CPU and the memory is on the fourth side. The man was helpful, I ordered it there even though I could have saved money at Newegg (with free shipping). You need Arctic Silver thermal compound but you do not need to polish the thermal plate until it is as smooth as a mirror like some fanatics do. That could take a long time!

Today I was reading the reviews of my heatsink at Newegg and I noticed that several people strongly recommended buying a mounting bracket for the heatsink. Without this, you are asking a plastic mobo to hold up a very heavy heatsink. I had actually been wondering about this, also you have to apply a lot of pressure on the mobo to get the push pins in. This is a bad design flaw from Intel. I ordered the bracket, this time from Newegg.

This is one tall heatsink. Over 6 inches!

[Neutron]

If its a 45nm cpu then you dont need anything that huge.
you could get something more reasonable and still run a 120mm fan pretty slow. and almost all of those type heatsinks with the heatpipes will have no trouble clearing the stuff on your motherboard.

actually looking at that pic some more if thats a 120mm fan its probably not that heavy. remember some have 10 heatpipes. and are a lot fatter than that one.

a bracket might be wise though with a tower type case, especially if you move it around. you can probably make one if you can operate a drill.

[garyb]

the bracket isn't really needed if the computer never moves and lays down flat, but it's a good idea if you're ever going to move it....

[braincell]

It's 600g (w/ fan). The bracket was only $9.00 and with free shipping. I guess I will have to take the motherboard out to mount this easily. First I will make sure it fits in the case! It got mostly great reviews. Some people thought it was difficult to install but they had some tips. The price isn't actually a lot for a good heatsink. I may even try some overclocking. I have two bios chips so I can experiment with the bios and not mess anything up but I will enjoy it as it is for a while first .

[braincell]

Actually it might be a good idea to turn it on it's side when you move it. I shouldn't worry with the bracket though I think.

[siriusbliss]

That's crazy.
What will they think of next?

May have to bolt it to the inside of the case somehow.

Greg

[braincell]

I did not want to get into water cooling. It's expensive, it leaks. Some people just fill an aquarium up with mineral oil and submerge the computer in it.

[valis]

"Water" Cooling hasn't used water in years. All of the current liquid cooling solutions on the market use the same non-conductive oils you see in the videos of people submerging their pc's. However most liquid cooling solutions are also not very quiet! They're targeted at overclockers who want to push things to extremes, the heat exchanger usually has fans that are far louder than a 70mm fan, let alone your huge 120mm fan.

However I'm running 2 .45 cores here, same era as Penryn but they're Xeons (Harpertown with 12Mb L2 cache each, larger than Penryn's cache) and I'm using stock ALUMINUM Intel heatsinks. When I first built this last year I was also concerned about needing a huge heatsink, and spent several weeks researching things. One upside is that Xeon socket771 still uses real backplate based heatsink mounting (the consumer 'clip' method on current cpu's really annoys me) but in the end the fellow I sourced my parts from (who builds workstations & servers for a living) convinced me to try the stock parts before worrying about anything aftermarket. Both cpu's run 2.66Ghz, quad cores each (and 12mb cache as mentioned), I have my BIOS set to 'workstation/quiet' and the cpu fans (70mm) run about 1800rpm at idle, 2000rpm at load and I can't hear them at all. CORE Temps are 38C - 44C at idle, and raise up to a spread of 42C - 50C under load, with no higher than 2200rpm ever seen here (cpu fans are PWM 4-pin models under BIOS control).

To check cpu temps on modern hardware I highly recommend Coretemp: http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

[braincell]

Thanks,

I will get that. I was considering altering the fan speed. I already ordered all the parts though plus this way I can experiment with overclocking and use the dual BIOS. I'm sure I will be really pushing the CPU at some point.

[siriusbliss]

The cheaper solution for me re: fan noise was to just put the PC's in a closet.

Greg

[braincell]

"It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering."

- J.G. Bennett

[ReD_MuZe]

what do you think of noding several underclocked fanless cpus

[braincell]

I don't know what you mean by "noding". I've seen someone use a CPU with no fan or heatsink on youtube but he wasn't making music with it. It's not something I would try. I put my ear right up to the 120 mm fan it sounds almost pleasant, just a low white noise.

I have been doing a lot of research about how to install the thermal paste. People use a credit card to smooth it out over the plate or with a plastic bag over the finger. This is not what the maker of Acrtic Silver 5 says to do and they make what 99% of people use (who buy it). Benchmarks.com is not spreading it out like that at all. They say most people do it wrong. In the example of a heatsink similar to mine, they used two small lines on the base of the heatsink and that seemed to work best (first they filled the cracks between the pipes). You can see how it spreads when you lift it but don't lift it because then you would have to clean it and apply it again.

I was a little apprehensive about this project but after this research I did, it does not seem difficult. The heatsink came today. It's pretty simple. The XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket didn't arrive yet. There was advice on the net for that also. I found a web page which explains it with photos. Mainly you want to make sure the plate under the mobo is in the right place before you stick it on since it is very difficult to remove. One guy said don't glue it so you can use it later in another machine. I don't care about that because this computer is to last 5-10 years.