srmeister wrote:
Is there any sort of easy-to-get solution, like a Socket A/462 cooler that fits on a Socket 3?
Going to reply to this separately (I'm eating my dinner now so my replies are a bit mungled up or something 🤣)
The thing is that (there were reasons but I'm not gonna explain here as it's not really relevant here) Socket 3, Socket 5, Socket 7, Socket 370 and Socket A actually have the same dimensions. This means that in theory all the CPU coolers that use clamps to attach to the tabs of the CPU socket are compatible with each other. This goes of course offer some very interesting perspectives!
However, theres always some problem down the road and a couple CPU sockets actually had different kinds of problems.
Socket 3s biggest problem is that many simply did not have the socket tabs to attach the CPU HSF clamp onto.
Socket 5/Socket 7 kinda always has these clamps, but many boards had all kinds of components like resistors and caps very close to the CPU socket so a big-ass Athlon XP (Socket A) HSF could be mounted to those Socket 7 sockets, but the heatsink would simply be blocked by those components.
Socket 370 (basically Pentium 3) has yet another problem...and it's called Tualatin (or actually integrated heat spreader).
Socket 370 (or just s370 for short) usually has plenty clearance around the CPU socket to a big-ass Athlon XP HSF could be mounted, but the extra height of the Tualatins meant the heatsink sat on top of the taller CPU, so the heatsink clamp would need to attach to socket tabs further away (the increased height means increased distance here) and put so much stress on those little plastic socket tabs that these would often break, usually already while mounting or when simply moving the rig around. It might happen spontaneously.
For all the above mentioned problems we came up with all kinds of solutions. For Socket 3 these z-wires or z-clips (no official name etc) were ideal provided the socket actually came with these tabs.
The best thing about this z-wire is that this way it's not hard to attach a much beefier heatsink to the 486 CPU (think passive cooling/overclocking) 😀
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask 😀
edit:
Apparently only the thumbnail was down, the pic was still there but photobucket is kinda aweful now so re-uploading my own pic here 😜