One for the "Oh, bugger" file

[unixronin]

whitestar's been spontaneously powering itself off since yesterday evening.  Having swapped out the power cord without success (on the speculation of a broken core in the power cord due to bending), I speculated that it was a CPU thermal problem, so I took the heatsink fan off to clean the top of the heatsink and (as I more than half expected) found it clogged with dust.

So I've removed and thoroughly cleaned the heatsink, I go to put it back on, and guess what . . . I can't find my heatsink thermal compound.

YO, MURPHY!  OFFA MY CASE!

Comments

[caged-admin.livejournal.com]

I have -- unless I threw it away -- this cute little Antec heatsink with a low-flow fan. I bought it largely because I'd heard it was a relabeled $SOMEOTHERCO¹ heatsink that was supposed to have great thermal transfer efficiency and really good dissipation.

After about four months of use, I pulled it off to replace it with my time-tested Slap A Huge, Slow Fan On A Huge, Heavy Heatsink formula. I discovered that a lot of the accumulated dust had slowly turned into an evil, half-carbonized encrustation on the fins. I'm not sure what to make of that.


---
¹ Dyna-something.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Dynaflow?

Right now, whitestar has a ThermalTake Volcano 7+, and babylon5 has the AMD-branded heatsink/fan that came with the CPU.

I saw a very interesting CPU heatsink yesterday ... a sort of bowl or flower of hundreds of little tiny thin vanes that must have been eight inches across, about half of them copper (why only half I don't know), with a 120mm unshrouded fan sitting in the middle. Looks like it would provide very gtood cooling, and according to the guys at the new Intrex store where I saw it (YAY! GREENVILLE HAS A COMPUTER STORE AT LAST!), it's very quiet.
They call it "the hovercraft" .... I guess they've never heard a hovercraft in operation. ;)

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention . . .

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

. . . one of the best things about it is it mounts with screws to a backplate, instead of using one of those *#&%&^(#@&$!#@)(*$)(@#$ steel spring clips. I'm always scared whenever I have to fasten (or even worse, remove) one of those damned things that I'm going to gouge a trace or put a screwdriver through the motherboard.

Re: Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention . . .

[caged-admin.livejournal.com]

I wish I could get Thermal Integration Technologies HSFs with bigger and quieter HSes and Fs. They have the clips, but to tighten the whole thing, you just push a lever. (Think ZIF sockets.) Want to take it back off? Flip the lever back up, pull the clips off (fingernails quite sufficient). Great stuff. Loud as hell, though. I've got three idential ThIntTech HSFs sitting around unused because sharing a room with them sucked so badly. Maybe I'll use 'em again if I press any Socket 7/370/A machines into service as closeted servers.