Even the basic, what might be called "stock" sinks for socket A usually do awesome on them. But as you note, the larger spreading sinks, probably those with 70mm and 80mm fans may not clear capacitors, there was extra clearance around CPU allowed in socket A spec for bigger sinks. But approximately square under a 60mm fan should fit.

I know these style to fit, 3rd item down and they're cheap....
https://www.a1parts.com/surplus/index.html
But they are core crushers on bare chips so only if you've got your spreader remounted, and avoid actual socket As with them.

I have one of these for my Socket 7 setup, I think it will be more than you need to keep a K6-2/3+ cool even at 600+ MHz. Readily available and the price is right (I think this is new old stock): https://www.ebay.com/itm/232862094084?chn=ps& … irZ6VqMICVz0wMc

Another option would be to buy a Noctua fan for the heatsink y0u already have, but one of those would probably be at least as much as that Cooler Master.

Thank you both for your help! I'll probably grab one of those from the ebay link but will use this little one for now just to get things built and set up. I'll be playing with slowing it down for DOS game before I get heavy into Win9X games and messing around with trying to get it to run 600+. Plus, I need to learn more about this motherboard and the dip switches. I found an old school beige tower case and dug out an extra fan. I was using a beige horizontal case but with a Voodoo5 in this system, I think that the desktop case will get too warm. I want this system to last, so despite the age and low power consumption of the CPU, I am going to ensure that there is adequate cooling.

Does anyone have any advice on how to apply the MX-4? I am scouring for info. When I took the heatsink off of the K6-2 500, there was what look like a lot of Arctic Silver everywhere. Luckily I still have some arctic clean.

I have gotten away with a Noctua on my K6+ chips over whatever heatsink. They don’t run too hot

As I was testing the system, last night, I began to smell an odor reminiscent of hot plastic and a melted hot glue stick. I looked at the board and saw that the fan wasn't spinning. I quickly shut the system down and the heatsink was extremely hot to the touch. Great, I'm cooking my $100 modded CPU, I thought. The seller had modded the fan to be used with a molex plug. Not having an alternative on hand, but wanting to continue to work on the system, I laid it on its side and placed a larger fan on top of the heatsink, holding it in with one screw. It kept the heatsink almost cold to the touch. I went into the BIOS and the seller had all warning notifications set to IGNORE. The wires came apart on the modded fan. I found out why he did it: the fan jack closest to the CPU starts up a connected fan when the system is booted, and then it stops spinning. I see no option to force it to run. However, the other fan jack works as it should. The CPU was running at 31/87 degrees. I placed a larger 80mm fan over the heatsink and it dropped it to 27/80 degrees. However, it is too large to hold it in place with any screws.

I ordered the Cooler Master heatsink/fan plus a couple of other fans, and a 92mm fan with a 92mm to 50mm 3d printed adapter. I remember using a fan adapter back in the day to use a larger fan to cool my Athlon XP 3200+. I hope there isn't any damage from the few minutes of cooking, but so far, the system seems fine. I finished installing all of my drives and today I will format and set up my various CF cards (one for MS-DOS, another for Windows 98SE Lite, extra storage and drivers/apps cars, etc.) I still have MX-4 so I will try the fan adapter first and if I am not satisfied, I will install the Cooler Master HS/Fan, once all of that stuff arrives. I am also going to test the two parallel port CF readers I have since they are very fickle and have gotten only one of them to work and only on one system. If it works, I may replace my dual CF drive with a single one and then replace the floppy drive with an LS-120. It is taking me longer to finalize the configuration of this system since with it being a K6+, I am replacing multiple systems (486 and up) with one, due to the ability to easily slow it down.

What were you booting? I found some middle aged linux distros seem to like to shut off all fans running on motherboard headers for some reason. Think it was Via chipsets mostly affected, I never did get to the bottom of whether it was some power management dipshittery or some hardware probing that pushed bits where they shouldn't be pushed.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-04-23, 18:48:

What were you booting? I found some middle aged linux distros seem to like to shut off all fans running on motherboard headers for some reason. Think it was Via chipsets mostly affected, I never did get to the bottom of whether it was some power management dipshittery or some hardware probing that pushed bits where they shouldn't be pushed.

I had a Windows 98 CF card installed (from a previous install so it gave errors before getting into Windows,) and the CF card that came with the system boots to Windows. However, I have been just testing for boot/post functionality and making sure that all of my drives were detected (I had to swap an IDE cable out in order for my dual-CF drive to work,) so I haven't been having it on for long periods except for maybe less than 20 minutes when I noticed the overheating, but that was because I was looking at my main display on my main PC to look up something. As long as there is no permanent damage, I am glad that it happened or else I may have put the case back together and not notice until it was too late!

I placed a different fan on the CPU fan header and went into the BIOS at there is a setting for the fan to kick on once a certain temp is reached and now it is working. Now I have a fan in the bottom from pulling air into the case, a fan pulling air out from right below the PSU, both fan headers working, and nothing in PCI 1 as to leave a nice gap below the Voodoo5's fans. I am considering a slot fan to push air onto the Voodoo5. Now I just have to finish setting things up, wait for the new cooling options to arrive, and figure out how this motherboard works as far as trying to achieve 600-633Mhz as OC is new to me ( I never really got into it before.) I made another thread about it in the hopes some educational information comes through.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-04-22, 22:40:

I have one of these for my Socket 7 setup, I think it will be more than you need to keep a K6-2/3+ cool even at 600+ MHz. Readily available and the price is right (I think this is new old stock): https://www.ebay.com/itm/232862094084?chn=ps& … irZ6VqMICVz0wMc

Another option would be to buy a Noctua fan for the heatsink y0u already have, but one of those would probably be at least as much as that Cooler Master.

The heatsink and fan arrived. It feels really heavy. I read on another thread that heavy heatsinks can be bad for these boards. Are you running yours in a tower or in a horizontal desktop? I also have the 92mm to 50mm fan adapter and a 92mm fan I am going to try since the 50mm heatsink is still attached to the CPU. I placed a 50mm fan on it that arrived first and using that or a 60mm held with one screw both made the CPU remain at 31C/87F when idle. A TT smart 80mm fan running full speed brought it WAY down, but was too loud and probably not necessary, so maybe there will be a happy medium with the 92mm fan (as long as the screws I have work for what I have.) If not, I will try the Cooler Master, despite its weight. I could probably feed string through the PSU fan grill and looped under the heatsink and cradle it.

I've mostly used this cooler on an Epox MVP3G-M in a standard ATX case. I've had no issues with it, and as far as the weight goes, it does use both clips on the socket rather than just one. When I think "Heavy" my mind goes to coolers such as copper Thermalright ones. I just weighed mine and it was 182 grams - for comparison a stock Intel Socket 370 cooler I have was 132 grams.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-04-29, 21:00:

I've mostly used this cooler on an Epox MVP3G-M in a standard ATX case. I've had no issues with it, and as far as the weight goes, it does use both clips on the socket rather than just one. When I think "Heavy" my mind goes to coolers such as copper Thermalright ones. I just weighed mine and it was 182 grams - for comparison a stock Intel Socket 370 cooler I have was 132 grams.

I am getting ready to install it as the 92mm w/adapter is actually worse than anything else I have tried, thus far.

Using the new CM HS/fan with the stock thermal pad for testing, The temps climbed up to 45c/114F, which is quite high compared to the 30C/87F I was getting before. Granted that today is rather hot outside (and in) compared to the other day when I Iast tested it with the replacement 50mm fan on the 50mm heatsink which came with the mobo. I didn't like that at all, so I cleaned the 50mm heatsink and put the 50mm fan back on it and cleaned/purified the CPU and HS and tested it without MX-4 and it got up to 45C/114F again.

I put MX-4 back on the CPU and now the temps are 35C/95F which I have to assume is okay for the room temperature, today. It may even go down more when I put the case back together as it is somewhat apart while I am doing all of this (and I am waiting for a 2nd DVD burner to arrive tomorrow to complete the build.

I adjusted the voltage down to 1.90v (at least I think I did, looking at the manual,) and it has been hovering at 35-36C/95-96F for about 10-15 minutes whereas it would have been higher by now with the previous tests. The seller who modded the K6 2+ 570ACZto a K6-III mentioned in the listing said that this CPU has a case rating of 85C, so I think I'm good to go. I don't know if MX-4 is like Arctic Silver, as I read back in the day that A.S. will have an Athlon XP run hot for a certain amount of usage hours while it settles and then the temps drop, and I never had any heating problems with those CPUs. The K6-2 I built back in 2000 used the stock HS/Fan and thermal pad and I never checked it because I didn't know what I was doing, back then. Even though it is quite warm today, I don't know that it warrants an almost 10-degree F increase in heat, but unless something happened to the temp sensor, nothing has changed other than swapping heatsinks and fans a few times today. One of these days I'll clean up the CM and use MX-4 on that, but, I still don't understand the massive increase in temps unless it doesn't make good contact with the CPU on this particular board.

People didn't always use thermal paste in the socket 7 days. Having to have active cooling on your CPU was only a few years old then. K6+ chips are extremely power efficient, and put out essentially no heat. The basic cooler it comes with is more than sufficient -- I'd recommend getting an appropriate noctua fan for the cooler (50mm more than likely, but you should check). It will stay plenty cool.

As you found out, the old chips made on the huge process nodes of the 90s are WAY more tolerant of abuse than the tiny transistors in modern CPUs.

aspiringnobody wrote on 2024-04-30, 01:25:

People didn't always use thermal paste in the socket 7 days. Having to have active cooling on your CPU was only a few years old then. K6+ chips are extremely power efficient, and put out essentially no heat. The basic cooler it comes with is more than sufficient -- I'd recommend getting an appropriate noctua fan for the cooler (50mm more than likely, but you should check). It will stay plenty cool.

As you found out, the old chips made on the huge process nodes of the 90s are WAY more tolerant of abuse than the tiny transistors in modern CPUs.

The heatsink is staying cool to the touch currently, but when the original fan died and I could smell the plastic, it freaked me out a little bit, 🤣. I'll be on the lookout for a noctua or similar fan. I hope to get a lot of retro gaming out of this system!

Scythifuge wrote on 2024-04-22, 22:16:

Greetings! […]
Show full quote

Greetings!

The PC I bought from ebay arrived today and is tested to function. I also bought a modded K6-2+ that has the extra cache enabled and is now a k6-III+ and the seller said that under the right circumstances, can get up to 600-633MHz. The idea is to have a system that can run as fast as I can get it whilst being able to easily slow it down to play games from The Golden Age. The motherboard is a DFI VIA MVP3. The heatsink and fan on the K6-2 500 that came with the motherboard is very small and the fan sounds a little ratty. I don't have a lot of options on hand for swapping that out, at the moment. Mostly Phenom and up heatsinks. I do have a passive heatsink on a Dell Pentium 3 that looks like it may fit. It looks like Socket A options may potentially fit. It is difficult to say because there is a row of caps on one side, and a row of 3 caps + a dipswitch on the other side. I have MX-4 on hand as my only CPU-spooge option. I read that the K6-plus line runs cooler than the non-plus CPUs.

Since my options are limited at the moment, will this little heatsink/fan that was cooling a non-plus K6-2 500 be fine for now? Are there any recommended cooling options for a K6-III+ on a DFI VIA MVP3? Should I use this MX-4, and if so, how much? Is there anything I need to know about getting this CPU to 600-633Mhz on this particular motherboard? Is the meaning of life, 42? Will it be hilarious to run an otherwise currently unused Voodoo5 on this set up for FSAA, 32-bit, DVD playback, and using the Windows 3.11 SVGA patch?

Many thanks, as always!
Scythifuge

In my experience getting much more than 600 mhz is tough. And it’s usually the motherboard that is to blame. Many of these ss7 systems barely are stable at 100 mhz fsb.

If you are lucky you can get a radeon 9800 pro or a geforce 2/quadro 2 working well. I’ve had luck with the 9800 from time to time, but not much with the GeForce which is supposed to be the fastest if you can get it to work.

Audigy 2 zs is my go to,

M.2 sata in 2.5” adapter on a promise tx4 works very well

Avoid usb 2.0 cards, try to use a hub on the onboard.

And have fun 😀 be patient, it will not go to plan and you will spend days debugging it sometimes 🤣

As for cooling, you don’t need much to make 600 stable. Just buy a noctuna for the heatsink you have. It is plenty enough.

You could go for a bigger heatsink but it really won’t probably make much difference. My fastest systems have had small skinks. And bigger ones trying to OC didn’t seem to help any. It’s a low wattage processor.

9600XT is a reasonable choice as well and will be bottlenecked by the K6. If you can find a Voodoo 2 for a reasonable price that would be a nice addition as well. Use the Radeon for newer games, and the V2 for early games.

Oldschool super top secret K6 overclockers trick was meant to be to ground the sink or spreader to squeeze out the last 20Mhz, but I never had good enough boards to be sure it did anything (i.e. there was still 50Mhz on the table from running on a better board.)

I am indeed limited with my board, though I think that a Vogons user named soggi made a modded bios to select a higher FSB. If I had a gigabyte board, I could get it to 633, but I am happy with 600. I will be using a Voodoo5 paired with a Voodoo2 for older stuff. I'm not currently using the V5 in anything so I want to put it to use. That CM heatsink is definitely bigger, but I think the problem is the stock thermal solution. I still have some MX-4 and another tube of some random stuff (if I can find it - I just saw it a few days ago, but you know how it goes, hehehe,) so at some point I'll try it again. The heatsink that came with it reduced the heat quite a bit with the MX-4, so I do want to give the bigger CM another chance with some of that stuff. Plus, it is easier to find really good 60mm fans than it is to find 50mm ones. So far, the only small Noctua I found is 40mm (makes me wonder how big the fans on the V5 are..) What I need to find is an old school fan adapter. The 3d printed one I bought didn't do much of anything, but laying an 80mm on top of the heatsink brought the temps so low that I couldn't believe it! However, it was so loud that I wouldn't go with that particular option.

I will probably try VIA 4in1 4.35 (I think that is the version,) though I read many posts with people going earlier. The biggest reason for this build is the speed-lowering benefits for DOS games. I am half-way through Wing Commander SM2 and am itching to jump into II and III and some other games. I haven't played a newer game in months. I have lost interest in them. But playing Quest For Glor and WC and other games on a 486 and then a Pentium 1 has been great!

I also reset the dip switches back to where they were for voltage, because the bios started acting weird.