Athlon - PREVENTION
OF PHYSICAL DAMAGE - Chipping of the die!
Tilting of the heatsink during
fitting or removal can result in chipping the edge off the silicon
die.
The heatsinks that come OEM usually have a gummy type of compound
to provide the thermal link and this tends to protect the CPU
from the damage that may occur with the more slippery and much
thinner thermal paste which you may wish to use on a reinstallation.
This page provides a preventative method
for avoiding this damage problem or at least minimising the possibility.
The modification can be easily removed if you need to for any
reason.
Job time - about 1 hour start to finish.
Here is a sketch showing the problem and the solution, followed by the method of application and a picture of a finished processor. The same method can be used on the XP processors also.
The idea is to stick, outside the four corners of the die, some pads which are solid and very slightly lower than the processor die. Thus, if the heatsink is tilted it immediately rests on these solid pad/s in the direction of tilt rather than breaking the edge off the die which may or may not kill the CPU depending on the extent of the damage. The positioning of these pads is not critical as long as the heatsink cannot slip inside the solid pads and end up across the edge of the die!
From the photo
below you will see that I used some self adhesive coloured dots
as the base - but any sticky paper will do or even sellotape/scotchtape.
Place a single drop of rapid
setting 5 minute epoxy mix in the centre of each dot [the epoxy
spots will finally end up at just less than 1mm height]. Do
not use slow setting epoxy as this sets far more solid finally
than the 5 minute type and this could be a disadvantage [apart
from the obvious delay in completing the modification]!.
Wait a few minutes till the
epoxy has just begun to gell but is still very tacky to touch
and pliable. Then put some small pieces of kitchen clingfilm
over the top of the epoxy dots only.
Make sure the top of the
CPU die is clean, turn the whole lot over and place on a flat
surface; a piece of glass is ideal. Then weight the
centre of the processor with a spacer and weight so that the die
is flat on the glass. Remember you have to compress the
four original rubber foam pads so a fair weight is needed!
Leave till the epoxy sets,
say around 3/4 hour, remove the weight, remove
the pieces of clingfilm from the epoxy pads, check that the dots
are lower than the die by the thickness of the clingfilm which
is about 1/2 of one thousanth of an inch.
These solid pads can be easily removed because they are built
on the paper dots, ie there is no epoxy stuck to the processor
base itself.
NB the processor as seen below is chipped
[lower left], so I surrounded the breakable edge with quick
epoxy just in case, it works just fine!!
This damaged chip was the reason for my thinking up this modification
in the first instance. Have fun! - Charlie+
