Robin4 wrote:

I think its just stupid to use such `el-cheapo` heatsink on such processor.. If you known better you had bought earlier a more decent cpu cooler.. Didnt know that people where that poor..
Now you need a cpu and cooler instead 😘

I knew i had some better athlon heatsink around, I was just too lazy to spend some time looking.
And my heatsink was the cheapest thing i could muster.

OK, I'm going to search through my big box of parts in search for my old hefty Duron 1.33GHz heatsink. I'll tell you how that goes.

swaaye wrote:

Yeah the problem with AMD CPUs before Athlon 64 was they had no internal thermal protection and the BIOS's thermal protection (if even enabled) was far too slow at reacting to a situation where the die has no cooling at all. The die can actually detach from the CPU package. It gets extremely hot very quickly.

^ He's not kidding

swaaye wrote:

I believe Athlon CPUs are stable up to about 75C. But they get unstable above that. I had a friend in college with one in a small case that had the PSU blocking the CPU fan and games started crashing at >80C.

They don't die unless much hotter though. 120C seems to be a common death zone for silicon. GPUs typically do a total shutdown it they get that hot for example.

Anyway, Athlon XP-M is where happiness is. They run much cooler, similar to a Pentium M.

FWIW, the Athlon XP-M is supposed to have thermal management - but my memory says that most desktop boards won't implement it completely, so you're better off trusting a big'ol heatsink. 50-60* C should not even be a discussion for day-to-day operation; good heatsinks exist and should be used. 😀

WRT Pentium M: I've seen Pentium M chips run without heatsinks and be okay - they re-define "low power consumption" quite readily. The LV and ULV models often have TDPs 10W or less (that's better than a Pentium III!). 😎

MatureTech wrote:

According to cpu-world, it has max TDP of 72.1 W but the maximum operating temperature is an amazing 95 C. Sounds like an Nvidia chip 🤣 If Athlons were really that robust I don't think this thread would have started; it just would have kept running.

If it wasn't making contact with the heatsink, or the heatsink wasn't able to handle the chip's output, thermal runaway can and will happen - CPUs are very dense heat sources, and can go from room temperature to dangerously hot very quickly. It isn't an Athlon problem or an AMD problem; it's a "this thing pulls a lot of power through a very small area and needs to be cooled off" problem.

Now I'm going to ask: *which* Athlon? There's a wide range of chips with a wide range of TDPs and theoretical maximum operating temperatures (not that you should except to run CPUs at theoretical limits).

Specifically I was thinking of the AthlonXP 3200+ when I made my comment; to use CPU World for the comparison, they state a typical power consumption for the 3200+ of 60W, and a maximum of 76W (and looking at other AthlonXP and Athlon models, it appears the 3200+ is similar to other top-performing models in that respect). And again, that's "low average" for modern CPUs - nothing to fret about, but it does require a more robust heatsink than what you might find on a Pentium MMX. 🤣

I have a 2.8 Ghz Northwood P4, max TDP 68.4 W, Tcase 75 C, doing OK with a Sonic Tower with a case fan and PSU fan pulling air over it vaguely. It gets up to 50-something C on typical loads. Seemed reasonable to try it on the Athlon right up until I read that it has no thermal throttling.

So a number of Socket A chips could probably work there as well (based on TDP figures), as long as the heatsink can be mounted appropriately.

EDIT - Quote isn't working right - sorry for the formatting not being perfect here. 😊

TELVM wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Yeah the problem with AMD CPUs before Athlon 64 was they had no internal thermal protection and the BIOS's thermal protection (if even enabled) was far too slow at reacting to a situation where the die has no cooling at all. The die can actually detach from the CPU package. It gets extremely hot very quickly.

^ He's not kidding

That was nuts. 🤣

(Deleted. No longer relevant anyway)

Ya don't suppose it was fake? (And where's my eyeroll emoticon when I need one?)

TELVM wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Yeah the problem with AMD CPUs before Athlon 64 was they had no internal thermal protection and the BIOS's thermal protection (if even enabled) was far too slow at reacting to a situation where the die has no cooling at all. The die can actually detach from the CPU package. It gets extremely hot very quickly.

^ He's not kidding

Uhhh, the die can detach?!! Holy fuck better get some crazy water cooling stuff going 🤣!
My pcchips board does have heat protection, and my new athlon 1.33GHz cpu is coming, with my old and crazy Duron heatsink. 😎

armankordi wrote:

Uhhh, the die can detach?!! Holy fuck better get some crazy water cooling stuff going 🤣!
My pcchips board does have heat protection, and my new athlon 1.33GHz cpu is coming, with my old and crazy Duron heatsink. 😎

I've seen photos of a die that came off with the heatsink because the fan had died and it had drastically overheated during operation.

But seriously you just need a reasonable heatsink. AMD's in-the-box coolers were fine. You don't need wacky water cooling or even solid copper to get the job done adequately.

obobskivich wrote:

FWIW, the Athlon XP-M is supposed to have thermal management - but my memory says that most desktop boards won't implement it completely, so you're better off trusting a big'ol heatsink. 50-60* C should not even be a discussion for day-to-day operation; good heatsinks exist and should be used. 😀

Palomino / Morgan and newer had an on-die thermal diode but it requires BIOS support. Prior to that the only temperature measurement was an external thermistor.

50-65C is nothing to worry about. I imagine that almost every computer sold with Athlon ran in that range.

swaaye wrote:

armankordi wrote:

Uhhh, the die can detach?!! Holy fuck better get some crazy water cooling stuff going 🤣!
My pc-chips board does have heat protection, and my new Athlon 1.33GHz CPU is coming, with my old and crazy Duron heatsink. 😎

I've seen photos of a die that came off with the heatsink because the fan had died and it had drastically overheated during operation.

But seriously you just need a reasonable heatsink. AMD's in-the-box coolers were fine. You don't need wacky water cooling or even solid copper to get the job done adequately.

I need to say this, the heatsink came off a dead motherboard containing an AMD Duron 700MHz CPU. The fan was added because of the old one failing. I understand that this heat-sink looks very shitty because of the tape. I'm going to get a fatter heatsink to help cool this hot potato.

MatureTech wrote:

... I'd suggest an SI-97 for Socket A or 370 if you can still find one; they weigh substantially less than the various solid-copper models, and remember that Socket A takes all of the heatsink weight on the clips - you can rip the socket (and CPU) off the board with a heavy heatsink and a good rattle ...

Back in the day I used a SI-97 to overclock a Thoroughbred with good results. The same SI-97 cools now a Tualatin on slotket (after some modification).

TELVM wrote:

swaaye wrote:

Yeah the problem with AMD CPUs before Athlon 64 was they had no internal thermal protection and the BIOS's thermal protection (if even enabled) was far too slow at reacting to a situation where the die has no cooling at all. The die can actually detach from the CPU package. It gets extremely hot very quickly.

^ He's not kidding

Completely fake. This is what really happens

fyy wrote:

Completely fake. This is what really happens

Yeah I was going to post that one but forgot. Thanks for putting it up.

armankordi wrote:

I need to say this, the heatsink came off a dead motherboard containing an AMD Duron 700MHz CPU. The fan was added because of the old one failing. I understand that this heat-sink looks very shitty because of the tape. I'm going to get a fatter heatsink to help cool this hot potato.

Hey if that homebrew setup works why bother. It looks like it might be fine as long as the fan doesn't fall off! It appears to be similar in size to a typical Athlon XP cooler. The super duper overclocker heatsinks that are being posted here are mainly for people who are going to run ~1.85v while overclocking.

Here is a decent aftermarket heatsink that you'd often see back in 2001. Gives an idea of typical size back then.

More historical reference: 😉
http://www.frostytech.com/articles.cfm?startrow=673

fyy wrote:

Completely fake ...

AMD Athlon 1GHz explosion

TELVM wrote:

fyy wrote:

Completely fake ...

AMD Athlon 1GHz explosion

*pop* awwww.. so cute! Haha. That's alot different than blowing a hole into the table. The first video is from guys who made alot of fake vids just for shits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggh2Mu4Qkgk

I remember Tomshardware noticing this. They made videos that shows Intel shutting down the computer and AMD starting to smoke 🤣

swaaye wrote:

Palomino / Morgan and newer had an on-die thermal diode but it requires BIOS support. Prior to that the only temperature measurement was an external thermistor.

Thanks for clarifying that. 😀

Regarding the heatsinks and temps - I was replying to the Pentium 4 comment in saying 50-65*C; some of those chips are done at 70-75* C, and personally I don't like to have a 10* C margin on the cooling if I can avoid it. I remember the Athlon/AthlonXPs with their in-the-box sinks (or the OEM knock-offs) running in that 50-60 range pretty regularly without much fanfare (and if I'm remembering right, most of the Athlon chips have a max-temp in the 80-90* C range); of course with a bigger heatsink you can take that lower (and provide headroom for overclocking), but that's another story.

SI-97 is a good heatsink; I've seen them on graphics cards before, but never a Slot 1... 😲

obobskivich wrote:

I was replying to the Pentium 4 comment in saying 50-65*C

I only went there because I've had a bad problem with cumulative fan noise. The idea was to put a big passive heat sink on the CPU and let one case fan do the work. But now with the Athlons I have the different problem that they will self-destruct if the fan freezes up before I notice that it's failing. So I'll end up putting in a new heat sink not because the old one was loud or broken but because the fan rattles a bit and I don't trust it. 😒

MatureTech wrote:

I only went there because I've had a bad problem with cumulative fan noise.

I had a similar complaint with my main computer; the solution I found that worked best was a combination of re-working how fans/airflow is directed through the case, noise-damping products (don't expect these, by themselves, to solve noise problems though), and switching heatsinks out for bigger models with slower moving fans. The end result is that it not only is quieter, but it runs cooler as well. I did give up some performance (I shed two GPUs in the process), but it's nothing I notice day-to-day.

Moving to bigger, slower fans tends to make the noise less annoying - especially if you take the time to set them up to work together, versus fighting each other; since re-doing all of that (it did take some trial and error) I don't even really bother dusting my case out, because it doesn't need it on average (maybe an annual once-over but it doesn't have to be opened and cleaned monthly).

The idea was to put a big passive heat sink on the CPU and let one case fan do the work. But now with the Athlons I have the different problem that they will self-destruct if the fan freezes up before I notice that it's failing. So I'll end up putting in a new heat sink not because the old one was loud or broken but because the fan rattles a bit and I don't trust it. 😒

Rattles can be caused from a few things - in some cases it's just the fan not sitting right on its shroud (which can usually be fixed by playing with it), or it can be caused by the fan not sitting right on its bearing/hub (which can usually not be fixed). Might be worth playing around with it out of the case to see exactly what's causing the rattle.

As far as a quiet-running Athlon system, the SI-97 that's been mentioned a few times pared with a quality 92mm fan will produce a very cool and very quiet running Socket A or Socket 370 system. There are other Thermalright heatsinks, like SLK800, SLK900, etc along with various other good models from Zalman (like CNPS7000 and similar), Swiftech (I forget the exact model # - it looks like it's made out of a lot of screws), Thermaltake (Tower-112 and 102 among others - I vaguely remember they also had a model with a TEC built-in), and AeroCool (Silent Tower or something along those lines - I vaguely remember there was an "Anniversary Edition" that had a gold-plated contact plate and worked very well). Just mate them up with a quality fan (Panaflo or Delta are my go-to suggestion, but I hear good things about Scythe and Noctua) and you should be set for a long while.

Some of the above models support multiple fans as well, if you want redundancy (the Thermaltake towers are a good example of that).