Placing The Pennies: My VOS-32
Mar 17th, 2002 | By Archive
Placing The Pennies: My VOS-32
Date
: 03/17/02 – 07:01:37 AM
Author
:
Category
: Cooling
Page 1 : Index
Since the day my Globalwin VOS-32 arrived, it's clipping mechanism has performed inadequately to say the least. It isn't that the thing is especially weak, it's a fairly strong steel alloy, it's just that the heatsink is held so loosely. The clip is so loose, the huge heatsink will jiggle around at the slightest bounce. The heatsink just sort of hangs there unevenly, and unfirmly(is that a word?). It doesn't get the job done.
When I first tried out the heatsink about a year and a half ago, I realized I was going to need something to steady the it. Otherwise, I would have had to send the thing back and reinstall the stock cooler, which had long ago proved to me it's own mediocrity. Here in this picture, the VOS-32 dwarfs the stock cooler from Intel.
Although the VOS-32 is definitely big, the processor contact is it's achilles heal, so to speak. Here is a small snippet from my review of the heatsink from a long time ago:
: I had a pretty big problem at first with the heatsink not contacting the CPU well and therefore not conducting heat well. Thats where the pennies came in. I stuck the pennies in all over the place so that there would be absolutely no give whatsoever. So little give in fact that no matter how much I stared at the heatsink, willing it to bend foward a little, it wouldn't budge. Without the pennies, I would get pretty bad contact and right when I booted up(at 825mhz 1.7v) the CPU would be running at 70C+ via the ondie CPU temp probe. Putting pressure on the heatsink while in the BIOS would result in temps up to 20C lower. Once I had enough pennies on there, the temp stabilized and I no longer needed to add pressure to the heatsink.
Here is a picture of the clipping mechanism with no pennies. As you can see, there is too much slack back there.
You can see how much of a difference the pennies made. Placement of the pennies has been a crucial undertaking by me for a while now. Every time I take the heatsink and processor apart, it takes me several attempts just to get the pennies placed in just the right position for maximum processor contact. A few months ago I finally found a good way to place them, and and CPU temperatures were pretty good under full load. Running prime95 and a bunch of other applications to fully use up the CPU, I achieved temperatures of about
48-49C
running my P3 550E at 733mhz(1.65v), with temperatures at around
38-39C
when idling. I didn't take my processor away from my heatsink for months, thinking that any slight shift would knock the heatsink around and ruin my precious
48-49C
at full load.
Well, eventually I took it apart to reapply my thermal paste, and for some reason forgot to remember how I had previously placed the pennies. I tried several variations, but with none of them did the heatsink stand up and take it like a man the way my previous penny placement had let it. There were either too many pennies on one side of the clip, or not enough, or they weren't in the right place. It sucked. So I'm sitting there the other day crying my eyes out about this, when it occured to me that I was only placing the pennies in such a way that a horizontally positioned heatsink(ie the computer is lying on it's side) would stay straight. It hadn't occured to me that the heatsink was being positioned vertically when I actually ran the computer, at least not in any way where I thought I could do something about it. So I stood the heatsink on end, and looked at how it tilted over a little, and how it was positioned unevenly just a little bit. I looked directly at the contacting area, and the contact was slightly uneven. So I got a couple pennies and righted the side that was uneven. That seemed to fix that problem.
Here you can see how I used my MacGuyver-like skills to get through this harrying situation.
The other problem was the horizontal unevenness. I had yet to find a solution in this aspect of my adventure. I had tried stacking three pennies on the top bar of the clip, but the three pennies stacked together were a bit too long, and it forced the top of the heatsink foward. So all of a sudden I got an epiphany! Why not use a nickel and one penny? A nickel is slightly thicker than a penny, so it would be like having 2 and a half pennies stacked, and not three. Well, I tried this, and it worked beautifully! The heatsink stood rigidly and even. I stuck the CPU into the slot, and booted up, no problems whatsoever. Hard to believe, since the CPU core is actually starting to wear out a bit at the corners. So much jostling after so much time, and the thing is still running like a real trooper. Good job, Intel. BTW, don't click on that link too much. We don't want Intel to be Overclockers Online'd.
So I get into Windows and run the Prime95 torture test, as well as a bunch of other things(writing this article), and my CPU temperatures have maximized and stabilized at
44-45C
full load. Idle is about
35-36C
at startup, which is pretty sweet. The whole episode was definitely worth all the mental anguish that went into it. Hey, I think I'm going to see what happens when I move it on up to 825mhz(150FSB). I had tried it, God knows why, during the long period before my epiphanies, and things didn't go well. I had the CPU stabilized at about 50C during full load at 733mhz, so I thought I'd see what happened when I upped it a notch. Well, when I got into windows, the damn thing was running at 68C. BSOD! After I hit the restart button, I took the heatsink apart and that is when I hit apon the nickel+penny idea mentioned above. UPDATE: Sweetness! Running at 825mhz 1.7v and full load is only at about 46-47C. That's even less than when I ran at 733mhz 1.65v before!
One last note. If you happened to click the link I set for my thermal paste, you'll see that I'm using Thermalloy Thermalcote silicon paste. I bought 4 oz of this stuff a few years ago, and even after using it on video cards and CPUs for 2 or 3 years, I probably still have about 95% of it still in the tube. Probably more. I don't think I'm ever going to get rid of it. I decided to order some of that Arctic Silver Paste, which is supposedly some of the best stuff out there readily available. I read a review today, and my stuff lags way behind the Silver by a whole 6C! I hadn't realized how bad Thermalcote is, but man, if I could get my CPU to <40C at full load with this Silver, that would be heaven. I'll report back on my results later this week. Here's hoping for the best!
Here she is in all here glory. The computer is on!