i have a dell dimension 8250 w/ a p4-2.4ghz (socket478). I am replacing the heatsink with a hyper48, b/c the comp overheats and crashes a lot. I am having a problem in that when I try to use the spring clips to secure the HSF, i find that it wont fit. The supplied retention bracket is too "short" (it won't reach the big wing-things the clips go over. I don't know what to do. Do you know where I can either buy a new r-bracket or get taller clips? oh, and btw, I also need a way to turn on the built in fan. I already looked at my mobo, and there is no 4-pin pwm connection for the fan. I basically can't plug it in to turn it on. The current case fan uses a 3-pin, so the hyper48's pluggy-thingy won't fit. I ran the comp on it's side (so the HSF wouldnt fall and break my really old geforce 4 mx420 or anything else valuable) and it shut off pretty soon, i think b/c the fan on the HS wasnt on. my motherboard is like from 2002, in case it helps.

EDIT- Found an r-bracket. just need to buy it.

Gangsta431 --

A p4-2.4ghz really doesn't produce that much heat; a stock dell system should not be crashing w/it.... unless you've turned down the fans? How do you know it's the CPU overheating that causes the crashes? Do you have a CPU temp monitor? (Many Dell boards don't.) Have you checked the airflow path & airflow through the case? Unrestricted case airflow is very important for cooling.

how do i get a monitor?

ugh for the life of me i can't firgure out how to slow down the fan speed on this heat sink. I tried using speed fan and even when every fan's speed was turned down to zero nothing happens. I tried going into Q FAN in BIOS and still nothing happens when i turned it down. Im running an Asus P5GD2 Premium mobo for this so any help would be apreciated.

It's in the manual under cpu fan ratio. With cpu q-fan enabled choose the lowest percentage cpu fan ratio. Q-fan mode should be DC. It seems like speedfan should work also, but I don't know that much about it.

tried setting it to DC but sitll no luck RPM still sitting at 2300

thx for all the help I updated my BIOS and found out that I was getting some troubles due to glitches with the PWM mode in my current BIOS. So i updated it and finally I got it working great super quiet ands till very effective.

That's great. - FG

I just bought a Hyper 48 on the recommendation of the sales agent (Tiger Direct). After reading the article and the comments about the weight being twice the recommendation, I am concerned. How concerned should I be? I move my pc a few inches occasionaly if I drop something behind it. Is this movement something to be concerned about?

What other heat sink would you recommend that is close to the 450 gram recommendation? Quiet isn't that big of a deal for me as my PS fan is on the noiser side. Keeping the CPU COOL is my biggest concern.

I also bought an Athlon 64 3700 CPU so you know what I am trying to cool. At this point, over-clocking isn't a consideration (because I am ignorant to it)

Thanks

Not that concerned. The biggest issue with weight is that the heatsink risks breaking loose when you're moving it. So long as your computer stays in one spot, you probably shouldn't worry too much. You might want to consider removing it from your case when travelling though.