Hi,
I have some noise problem. Would you please give me some advices and put me on the right track?
Computer: IBM Intellistation MPro 6868, P3 933 Mhz, 784 MB Ram, 2 IDE drives.
The computer is 8 years old. However, it does the job perfectly, my wife uses it mainly for browsing the Internet, reading PDF and doing some office docs. The noise now becomes very noticeable. Before we get fed up and buying a new quieter computer, I'd like to attempt a more environment friendly solution.
I have changed the case fan for a 120 mm Antec 3 speeds where I set to low (1200 rpm). I have also replaced the 40 mm CPU fan by a used fan I believe still in better shape than the original one. The noise is reduced but still too noticeable. Among the sources of noise, I think that it's the CPU fan and may be the two hard drives. I have tried disconnect the fan while the computer is working and feel that the noise is significantly reduced.
My plan is to change the heat sink of the CPU for a bigger one with no fan. Next, if the computer still works stable, I'll get rid of the second hard drive.
Picture below, left is my P3 and right is the CPU I'd like to cannibalize the heat sink. The "victim" CPU comes from an old Dell PowerEdge server with P3/450 that my company is disposing.
I think I can handle the disassembling and re-assembling of the 4 clips holding the heat sink against the CPU. Peeping through the gap, I see that there is a yellowish patch of glue or thermal paste contacting the heatsink and the CPU. What is strange is that this "paste" is pretty thick, may be 0.5 mm.
Question: What is this thick yellow paste? Is it glue? Is there any risk of destroying the CPU if I attempt to separate the heat sink? Hoping that I can disassemble the heat sink, can I use a regular thermal paste to replace this yellow thing?
If you see any flaw in the plan or have any extra advices, I would greatly appreciate to share you inputs.
Thank you very much in advance for any help.
P3 Slot1 how to remove heat sink
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Here is the picture. Forum rules required that I must have at least 1 post to be allowed to post URL & Links.
Left, my P3/933: http://processorfinder.intel.com/Detail ... Spec=SL448
Right, the P3/450: http://processorfinder.intel.com/Detail ... Spec=SL364
Left, my P3/933: http://processorfinder.intel.com/Detail ... Spec=SL448
Right, the P3/450: http://processorfinder.intel.com/Detail ... Spec=SL364
First off, you CAN destroy the CPU by attempting to remove/install a heatsink and making a mistake. The P3 processors lack the heatspreader of P4 processors. The CPU die is thus unprotected and pretty easy to damage.
Second, that yellow stuff is certainly thermal paste of some sort. While the primary purpose is merely to fill in gaps to transfer heat to the heatsink, it may indeed act as "glue" as an incidental side effect. This does indeed increase the risk that you may damage the CPU while attempting to remove the heatsink.
Third, you probably do NOT need to remove your current heatsink. The current heatsink is a lot bigger than the ones I use to fanlessly cool slot-1 processors. I used to mess with the heatsinks on slot-1 processors, and killed a couple CPUs that way. However, I eventually decided to see what would happen if I simply left the puny stock heatsink on and merely removed the fan. I haven't overheated a single slot-1 CPU yet.
Therefore, my suggestion would be to either remove the CPU fan or to undervolt the fan if you're not comfortable with simply removing it.
My experience with silencing slot-1 systems is that the CPU fan is almost always the biggest noise culprit, and that the solution is shockingly simple--just remove the fan entirely.
Second, that yellow stuff is certainly thermal paste of some sort. While the primary purpose is merely to fill in gaps to transfer heat to the heatsink, it may indeed act as "glue" as an incidental side effect. This does indeed increase the risk that you may damage the CPU while attempting to remove the heatsink.
Third, you probably do NOT need to remove your current heatsink. The current heatsink is a lot bigger than the ones I use to fanlessly cool slot-1 processors. I used to mess with the heatsinks on slot-1 processors, and killed a couple CPUs that way. However, I eventually decided to see what would happen if I simply left the puny stock heatsink on and merely removed the fan. I haven't overheated a single slot-1 CPU yet.
Therefore, my suggestion would be to either remove the CPU fan or to undervolt the fan if you're not comfortable with simply removing it.
My experience with silencing slot-1 systems is that the CPU fan is almost always the biggest noise culprit, and that the solution is shockingly simple--just remove the fan entirely.
The yellow stuff is actually a thermal "adhesive" and is meant to be real sticky. It was usually used on older passively cooled devices/components (northbridges and video processors). You can loosen it up by using a hair dryer and heating up the heat sink and twisting. But in order to do that you have to remove the P3 heatsink first.
The original PII and P3 heatsink had retention clips on the back side of the processor that pulled the HSF close to the die. Then they came out with the dreaded clips. These are a PITA and if you don't know how to take them out you WILL destroy the core doing it.
Fortunately, I'm willing to part with this wisdom to avoid your heartache. You'll need to have a standard case screw. The hex-head/Phillips-head type are fine. Then you will need a flat hard surface that can handle some weight (no TV-trays).
1) Locate the holes for the HSF clips on the back side of the processor, there should be four in a square/rectangle pattern.
2) Place the case screw inside the hole for the HSF clip.
3) Place the heatsink on the flat, hard surface with the screw on the bottom and press straight down firmly over the area of the screw (so you don't torque the card).
4) The pin should snap out of place and you can repeat for the other 3 holes. These clips were generally "one-and-done", but this process will allow you to reuse the clips (a few times at least) if the new heatsink needs them.
I will say that you probably won't get passive operation out of a 933MHz P3, but you will be able to use a bigger, slower fan. I had a 650Mhz Coppermine P3 that ended up working ok passively in a case with a LOT of noisy airflow (my bro's), but it became a little unstable when OC'd to 729Mhz. Not necessarily an indicator, but those things can get pretty hot. There's a reason they stayed below 1GHz for a LONG time and AMD walked away with the crown.
The original PII and P3 heatsink had retention clips on the back side of the processor that pulled the HSF close to the die. Then they came out with the dreaded clips. These are a PITA and if you don't know how to take them out you WILL destroy the core doing it.
Fortunately, I'm willing to part with this wisdom to avoid your heartache. You'll need to have a standard case screw. The hex-head/Phillips-head type are fine. Then you will need a flat hard surface that can handle some weight (no TV-trays).
1) Locate the holes for the HSF clips on the back side of the processor, there should be four in a square/rectangle pattern.
2) Place the case screw inside the hole for the HSF clip.
3) Place the heatsink on the flat, hard surface with the screw on the bottom and press straight down firmly over the area of the screw (so you don't torque the card).
4) The pin should snap out of place and you can repeat for the other 3 holes. These clips were generally "one-and-done", but this process will allow you to reuse the clips (a few times at least) if the new heatsink needs them.
I will say that you probably won't get passive operation out of a 933MHz P3, but you will be able to use a bigger, slower fan. I had a 650Mhz Coppermine P3 that ended up working ok passively in a case with a LOT of noisy airflow (my bro's), but it became a little unstable when OC'd to 729Mhz. Not necessarily an indicator, but those things can get pretty hot. There's a reason they stayed below 1GHz for a LONG time and AMD walked away with the crown.
Thank you both very much for your advices. You certainly avoid me breaking the CPU because the method I was thinking of is less elegant. Anyhow, I am still willing to take a chance to replace the heat sink.
As for the thermal adhesive, how should I clean it? Can I use paint thinner or nail polish remover?
As for the thermal adhesive, how should I clean it? Can I use paint thinner or nail polish remover?
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bonestonne
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its not thermal paste, or at least it shouldn't be. it should just be a thermal pad that was put into place.
to clean it, simply use a paper towel and wipe it off as much as possible, don't use anything else, especially not water. it'll be fine as long as you're careful about it. if you're afraid of any contact, use an old toothbrush to clean surrounding resistors.
one thing i raise question to is the mounting. those two heatsinks do not use the same mounting brackets....i hope you don't expect a heatsink swap to really work......
to clean it, simply use a paper towel and wipe it off as much as possible, don't use anything else, especially not water. it'll be fine as long as you're careful about it. if you're afraid of any contact, use an old toothbrush to clean surrounding resistors.
one thing i raise question to is the mounting. those two heatsinks do not use the same mounting brackets....i hope you don't expect a heatsink swap to really work......
The photo doesn't show the mounting clips. They use different clip systems. The P3/933 use a metal clip with a spring plate on the back. The P3/450 uses 4 plastic clips. The 4 holes are identical in position in both processors. If I mess up too much destroying the clips, I can still mount them using simple nuts & bolts.bonestonne wrote:one thing i raise question to is the mounting. those two heatsinks do not use the same mounting brackets....i hope you don't expect a heatsink swap to really work......
I'd count on using nuts and bolts. The stock clips don't inspire much confidence for reuse...at least in my experience. When I put one of the stock heatsinks back on (after using a VGA cooler for a while), I used nuts and bolts. Worked like a charm.
As for whether you can really run it fanless with the current heatsink--I stand by my original statement that it'll likely work fine. One of my P3 machines was an 800mhz processor with a TINY stock heatsink. It ran fanless just fine for years. I only killed it when I made a mistake needlessly replacing that heatsink with a bigger one. I shouldn't have done that, since it was running just fine with the existing heatsink.
Note that even though the CPU was fanless, the computer as a whole was NOT running truly passive. There was still the power supply's fan ultimately moving hot air out of the case. I would not recommend going truly passive. You need at least one fan somewhere either pushing fresh air in or pulling warm air out of the case.
I have not seriously overclocked any of my CPUs, and I expect this makes a difference in terms of heat. Only one of my Slot-1 motherboards is capable of any overclocking at all, and its front-side bus and PCI/AGP bus are tied to the same clock as the processor. As such, I was only ever able to overclock by a pathetic 103%. Any higher than that, and the memory and/or video card would fail.
As for whether you can really run it fanless with the current heatsink--I stand by my original statement that it'll likely work fine. One of my P3 machines was an 800mhz processor with a TINY stock heatsink. It ran fanless just fine for years. I only killed it when I made a mistake needlessly replacing that heatsink with a bigger one. I shouldn't have done that, since it was running just fine with the existing heatsink.
Note that even though the CPU was fanless, the computer as a whole was NOT running truly passive. There was still the power supply's fan ultimately moving hot air out of the case. I would not recommend going truly passive. You need at least one fan somewhere either pushing fresh air in or pulling warm air out of the case.
I have not seriously overclocked any of my CPUs, and I expect this makes a difference in terms of heat. Only one of my Slot-1 motherboards is capable of any overclocking at all, and its front-side bus and PCI/AGP bus are tied to the same clock as the processor. As such, I was only ever able to overclock by a pathetic 103%. Any higher than that, and the memory and/or video card would fail.
Thanks very much for your input again. I have definitely underestimated the Slot1. So far I have always dealt with "normal" sockets where I have removed the heatsink for dusting or replacement. It was always pretty easy I just speculate that the Slot1 would be just the same. The only difficulty I thought would be to undo the clips.IsaacKuo wrote:As for whether you can really run it fanless with the current heatsink--I stand by my original statement that it'll likely work fine. One of my P3 machines was an 800mhz processor with a TINY stock heatsink. It ran fanless just fine for years. I only killed it when I made a mistake needlessly replacing that heatsink with a bigger one. I shouldn't have done that, since it was running just fine with the existing heatsink.
Following your plan, re-using the same heatsink would save me a lots of time. If you don't mind I'll try some variations. On the left and right side of my current heat sink, there is some empty space. I'll saw some Celeron heat sink I still have and glue them there will thermal adhesive. Will show photo when the contraption is ready.
As for overclocking, I am NOT interested. Quite the contrary, I will underclock to reduce the heat.
BTW, I have achieve the best overclocking human can do. Jumping from P3/1Ghz to Intel E8400 3Ghz. I just waited 8 years to buy a new computer b/c my 2nd computer is not powerful enough to run VMWare.
Same experience here. I have an P3-900 running for two or three years already with a non-functional CPU fan and piles of dust in the case. Afaik the TDP is also only 27W iirc.IsaacKuo wrote:As for whether you can really run it fanless with the current heatsink--I stand by my original statement that it'll likely work fine. One of my P3 machines was an 800mhz processor with a TINY stock heatsink. It ran fanless just fine for years. I only killed it when I made a mistake needlessly replacing that heatsink with a bigger one. I shouldn't have done that, since it was running just fine with the existing heatsink.
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bonestonne
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i mean the retention for the CPU itself. on uses a partial clip which holds the CPU at about half height. the other CPU has a full height clip from what i see, which clips onto the CPU from the very top.Calm wrote:The photo doesn't show the mounting clips. They use different clip systems. The P3/933 use a metal clip with a spring plate on the back. The P3/450 uses 4 plastic clips. The 4 holes are identical in position in both processors. If I mess up too much destroying the clips, I can still mount them using simple nuts & bolts.bonestonne wrote:one thing i raise question to is the mounting. those two heatsinks do not use the same mounting brackets....i hope you don't expect a heatsink swap to really work......
i had similar problems with the heatsinks on my S2DGU board. the caps around the sockets were higher than i thought, and i had to knock a whole fin off the bottom before i could mount those heatsinks on. for Xeons they run pretty well in a semi-passive environment, but i want to get them into a new case with better fans soon. (the CPUs are 700mhz/2MB/100mhz P3 Xeons using Slot2 interface, they're also overclocked to 783mhz through a BIOS setting).
Hi Friends.
I made it. Heat sink swapped, the current post is being written on the P3 running with the new heat sink with no fan. And indeed, the noise is significantly reduced.
Summary of what I have done:
- The yellow stuff thought to be thermal adhesive turned out to be simple thermal paste. The apparent thickness was simply the overspill.
- I followed the procedure indicated by jhhoffma and could snap the clips out easily. On my P3 the clips are tightened in the back by a spring plate, it was even easier (just slide the plate to release the clips). On both CPUs, there was no glue. As soon as the clips are released, the heat sink came off easily. I cleaned the old paste with Goo Gone (a citrus solvant).
- As bonestonne has warned above, the clip retention system is completely different. I could re-use the plastic clips that were used in the bigger heat sink. But the original "spring" system was in plastic and now becomes totally rigid. In other words, it has now very few elasticity and I am not sure it will apply enough pressure on the HS against the CPU.
- Finding the replacement of the clip was what took me 90% of the time. I had to make two trips to Home Depot before I find the correct screws. The "nuts and bolts" home made clips are very delicate to tune. I had to be very careful to tighten slowly each of them to ensure that the pressure is applied evenly on the CPU die. And especially to resist the temptation of overtightening.
I have no clue if the heatsink is sit perfectly flat against the CPU die. When I turned on the computer, the heat sink becomes warm after 2 minutes. Running Stress Prime 2004 (http://sp2004.fre3.com/download.htm), after 15 minutes, the HS becames uncomfortably warm and Stress Prime terminated reporting hardware failure. When Stress Prime is not running the HS is still pretty warm but the computer seems to run OK for now.
Mounted in computer: P3 with bigger heat sink, no fan (hope fully forever). The tools used to cut the big heat sink back plate to mimic the dimension of the smaller one.
I made it. Heat sink swapped, the current post is being written on the P3 running with the new heat sink with no fan. And indeed, the noise is significantly reduced.
Summary of what I have done:
- The yellow stuff thought to be thermal adhesive turned out to be simple thermal paste. The apparent thickness was simply the overspill.
- I followed the procedure indicated by jhhoffma and could snap the clips out easily. On my P3 the clips are tightened in the back by a spring plate, it was even easier (just slide the plate to release the clips). On both CPUs, there was no glue. As soon as the clips are released, the heat sink came off easily. I cleaned the old paste with Goo Gone (a citrus solvant).
- As bonestonne has warned above, the clip retention system is completely different. I could re-use the plastic clips that were used in the bigger heat sink. But the original "spring" system was in plastic and now becomes totally rigid. In other words, it has now very few elasticity and I am not sure it will apply enough pressure on the HS against the CPU.
- Finding the replacement of the clip was what took me 90% of the time. I had to make two trips to Home Depot before I find the correct screws. The "nuts and bolts" home made clips are very delicate to tune. I had to be very careful to tighten slowly each of them to ensure that the pressure is applied evenly on the CPU die. And especially to resist the temptation of overtightening.
I have no clue if the heatsink is sit perfectly flat against the CPU die. When I turned on the computer, the heat sink becomes warm after 2 minutes. Running Stress Prime 2004 (http://sp2004.fre3.com/download.htm), after 15 minutes, the HS becames uncomfortably warm and Stress Prime terminated reporting hardware failure. When Stress Prime is not running the HS is still pretty warm but the computer seems to run OK for now.
Mounted in computer: P3 with bigger heat sink, no fan (hope fully forever). The tools used to cut the big heat sink back plate to mimic the dimension of the smaller one.
One thing I use to help out with these Slot 1 rigs is the Zalman PCI Bracket and Fan, here it is at endpcnoise.com:
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=fb123.html
Works real nice at getting some airflow over these heatsinks quietly. Cheap too.
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std/sku=fb123.html
Works real nice at getting some airflow over these heatsinks quietly. Cheap too.
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bonestonne
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it might be my eyes, but is that a dual slot 1 motherboard? i own a dual Slot 2, but i've never seen a dual slot 2.
it would be interesting to see if a trip on ebay got that thing an identical CPU to double the power, along with a GPU heatsink.
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... 00-cu.html
i probably wouldn't be able to find the post, but i've seen it done before. you mount that on diagonally...you'd have to search for the topic, but it has been done before and it works well.
it would be interesting to see if a trip on ebay got that thing an identical CPU to double the power, along with a GPU heatsink.
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/std ... 00-cu.html
i probably wouldn't be able to find the post, but i've seen it done before. you mount that on diagonally...you'd have to search for the topic, but it has been done before and it works well.
Call that strange coincidence, the only two computers having P3 Slot1 I have seen both have two Slot1. The first is the IMB MPro 6868 I bought from an IT liquidator shop 4 years ago. The 2nd is an old Dell PowerEdge where I took the CPU to take the heat sink.bonestonne wrote:it might be my eyes, but is that a dual slot 1 motherboard? i own a dual Slot 2, but i've never seen a dual slot 2.
it would be interesting to see if a trip on ebay got that thing an identical CPU to double the power, along with a GPU heatsink.
The 2nd slot is unused and plugged with a dummy card which is the default config. I am afraid that my wife won't notice any difference with a 2nd CPU as she is not a power user. This heat sink episode already took me quite an amount of time. If I have to spend any more money/time, I'd rather build a brand new computer.
I am sitting close to that fanless computer for a few hours now. I have put a piece of carpet under the case to dampen even more the noise. I am baffled that the noise is still quite noticeable. So then this should be the two hard drives or the case that amplifies the vibrations ?!
My next task would be to backup some data and remove the 2nd hard drive
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bonestonne
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actually, from what i've seen and know of, the noise you might hear now is actually the power supply. i only have a couple (maybe 3 at the most) old power supplies that you could call quiet right now. most just ran the 80mm fan at 12v, no temperature monitoring at all.
best way to find out if it is the drives would be to hold them and then start the computer and see if the sound is still so pronounced, or if your hands are vibrating a lot from the drives.
you could also lay the drives out of the case and just stretch the IDE cable...i've done that before.
best way to find out if it is the drives would be to hold them and then start the computer and see if the sound is still so pronounced, or if your hands are vibrating a lot from the drives.
you could also lay the drives out of the case and just stretch the IDE cable...i've done that before.
You know better my machine than I do, really! I have "listened" to the PSU casing several times, using a mechanics tricks sticking the ear on the handle of a screw drivers and touching firmly the metallic end on the case. I didn't hear anything. Only a quiet noise.bonestonne wrote:actually, from what i've seen and know of, the noise you might hear now is actually the power supply. i only have a couple (maybe 3 at the most) old power supplies that you could call quiet right now. most just ran the 80mm fan at 12v, no temperature monitoring at all.
Until I got fed up and I unplug everything except the PSU. And shockingly enough, that was the noise I was looking for. So this weekend I will replace the 80mm fan. Hopefully I will be done with this machine.
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bonestonne
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