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Cooling units on Pentium chips

One aspect of cooling in older systems that is often not addressed is airflow within the case itself. A heatsink and fan isn't going to do much good if there's no way to get the warm air displaced outside the case somehow. Because there was no standardized layout for older boards, this can sometimes be a problem.
 
That's what the power supply and fan are for. :)

But luckily those back plate slot coolers with squirrel fans are easy enough to get too for cases with no rear fan mounts. :)
 
I tend to use towers and have one fan blowing air in at the bottom and another sucking air out under the PS (or above it in bigger AT towers) so there is air flow (as long as I clean the grill of dust every year or two). Even with bad airflow a fan will still remove heat better then just a heatsink, that extra removed heat will just heat up everything else in the box. You create airflows just from heat rising from the heatsink and cooler air dropping. If you want to talk stupidity why are video card heatsinks and fans facing down instead of up!
 
Hmmm, I'm a bit late to the party on this thread, but I thought I'd add my 2c and a funny story as well! ;)

It must have been circa 1995/1996 when my old man man got a P60 mobo and chip, and at this stage is where I started fiddling with the innards of PC's...
I recall seeing a DIP switch or jumper pin that stated 60/66MHz. I set the jumper to 66MHz, not really knowing at that point that it was in fact my first attempt at overclocking, which worked fine for years after that. At a much later stage, I fiddled with the board for some reason, and I recall stripping the fan/cooler to clean the fan and sink out a bit. Obviously my overclocking created a bit of extra heat in the CPU, and had just bout burnt the casing of the fan where it fitted to the sink, made nice parallel shiny lines on the fan casing :D

So, my long winded story is just to enforce my personal opinion and experience - if it is a standard CPU, 486 @ 50MHz and up, I will put a sink and fan combo on it... I would rather overkill on the cooling than have too little. Even on my latest machines, if any temp goes > 50*C I start shopping for fans/coolers/etc.

Cheers! :)
 
Tetrium said:
I found this webpage to be very usefull as a start for finding out how much heat one particular processor may output.
http://mysite.verizon.net/pchardwarelinks/elec_pentium.htm
Note that underclocking a P1 166 (non-mmx) to 100Mhz may actually run cooler then the original P1 100Mhz as the 166 was made in a smaller process, thus producing less heat ;) (Well, in theory atleast :p )
Click to expand...

Good find. Yes, I've always been a fan of underclocking.

The charts are also interesting in that they give the maximum case temperature. I note that for a Pentium Classic, they quote 70° C which would be hard to reach under normal circumstances. Where I live, the ambient temperature never gets above 40° C so a case fan wouldn't even serve any purpose. Personally, on older computers like that, I don't use the case anyway, so cooling would only be needed if the house was on fire. :) I note too that some chips can have a maximum case temperature of 95° C which would be unreachable in any environment inhabitable by humans. IOW, cooling is irrelevant in most "cases".
 
Chuck(G) said:
..... I simply fashion a clip out of a 15 ga. stainless steel bicycle spoke.
Click to expand...

Could you please explain to me how you do this exactly? I find this info very interesting as those clips are excellent for holding heatsinks to ZIF sockets and those clips are quite tough to find!
 
Tetrium said:
Could you please explain to me how you do this exactly? I find this info very interesting as those clips are excellent for holding heatsinks to ZIF sockets and those clips are quite tough to find!
Click to expand...

Take a look at a typical Socket 7 ZIF--along the centerline of the socket, there are two rectangular bosses on either side that are used by those 2-piece flat spring clips. On either side of these, there are usually two more bosses--rectangular but with rounded bottoms. The trick to making a clip using a bicycle spoke and bending it in sort of a three-dimensional "Z" shape so that each end slips under the rounded bosses.

If that's not clear enough, I can take some photos.

544px-Socket_7.jpg
 
I use one of these:

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?img...&sa=X&ei=2ny9TL-GM5OEvAOT1ukm&ved=0CDUQ9QEwBg

on my socket 4 board. I mentioned it earlier, but since it has a similar off center clip like the above, I thought I'd throw this back on out there. The hsf I'm talking about is the one on the left with the large mc on it. Pretty common ppro hsf. Notice how the top assembly is all together? I just bent back the "long reach" (left in picture that's over the socket cam), clip arms to compensate for the shorter socket. Spacing width was pretty spot on.
 
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