[OT] Annoying belated discovery

A year or more ago I added a Zalman Heat sink to the processor on my backup
machine. As it was identical to my work machine I gave it little thought.

Both have tower cases. This means that the motherboards are vertical, which
in turn means that the heat sinks (or coolers in PC parlance) are virtually
hanging off the motherboard from mounts. These are pretty flimsy affairs and
that second lot broke.

I only found out when the machine crashed during grub2 or while checking the
BIOS settings.

A combination of superglue and reinforcing with Araldite did not work. So I
blew the expense and forked out £4.00. I just hope it will do the job. it is
due to arrive tomorrow.

Hey ho!


--
Mageia 5.1 for x86_64, Kernel:4.4.74-desktop-1.mga5
KDE version 4.14.5 on an AMD Phenom II X4 Black edition.

Pinnerite wrote:
A year or more ago I added a Zalman Heat sink to the processor on my backup
machine. As it was identical to my work machine I gave it little thought.

Both have tower cases. This means that the motherboards are vertical, which
in turn means that the heat sinks (or coolers in PC parlance) are virtually
hanging off the motherboard from mounts. These are pretty flimsy affairs and
that second lot broke.

I only found out when the machine crashed during grub2 or while checking the
BIOS settings.

A combination of superglue and reinforcing with Araldite did not work. So I
blew the expense and forked out £4.00. I just hope it will do the job. it is
due to arrive tomorrow.

Hey ho!



There was some CPU socket retention feature, that had
three tabs, but the heatsink used to clip onto only
the "main" tab. A combination of the spring force,
and time, would result in the plastic tab snapping
off, and the heatsink hanging down inside the computer.
Usually this would happen roughly a year after doing the build.
There were some other heatsink/cooler brands, where the
retention bar used all three tabs, and those did not
snap off.

The CPU companies, do have suggested maximum mass
values for heatsinks. And the largest heatsinks
regularly violate that spec.

On my newer machine, I hold the heatsink up with a
couple dowels. The dowels have large washers, and
adjustable nuts, and I can tighten or loosen the
adjustable nuts, to put the heatsink into the right
position (not stressing the mount). But, the dowels
get in the way of inserting PCI Express cards, so this
is hardly an ideal situation.

I thought about suspending that heatsink from the top
of the tower, but that would be a lot harder to build,
to make it effective.

And this is all necessary, to compensate for the mass
of the heatsink, when the tower is upright. It's to
prevent the thing from getting torqued.

Paul

KenW wrote:


Move the fridge with the beer and lay the thing on it's side. SIMPLE
!!


KenW

The problem is space-related. But I'm too lazy to completely
re-arrange all the furniture in here. Wires, wall adapters,
power bars (maybe four of them), go everywhere.

You can get "open frame" PC cases, used for lab environments,
and that would make life a lot simpler. Only a few of these
get everything right. This way, your heatsink stays upright
and doesn't need to be braced.

http://i.imgur.com/LJQVX.jpg

Paul

[snip]

You can get "open frame" PC cases, used for lab environments,
and that would make life a lot simpler. Only a few of these
get everything right. This way, your heatsink stays upright
and doesn't need to be braced.

http://i.imgur.com/LJQVX.jpg

Paul

I used to have a dog with overactive salivary glands, and "icicles"
hanging from his mouth, with bits of dog food stuck in them. Not a good
thing to have an exposed PC then.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Keep Christ out of Christmas

Mark Lloyd wrote:

[snip]

You can get "open frame" PC cases, used for lab environments,
and that would make life a lot simpler. Only a few of these
get everything right. This way, your heatsink stays upright
and doesn't need to be braced.

http://i.imgur.com/LJQVX.jpg

Paul

I used to have a dog with overactive salivary glands, and "icicles"
hanging from his mouth, with bits of dog food stuck in them. Not a good
thing to have an exposed PC then.

Are those hard on the furniture ?

Wipe their face on the couch ? :-)

I know dogs with an allergy, who will spend
all day rubbing their snout on the coach. It means
living in a household where "we can't have anything nice"
or words to that effect. Imagine if your "icicles"
dog developed an allergy and had an itchy face.

I think I'd rather keep goldfish. In the basement. Or the garage.
Then, "what happens in the basement, stays in the basement".

Paul

On 08/24/2017 03:40 PM, Paul wrote:

[snip]

Are those hard on the furniture ?

Wipe their face on the couch ? :-)

And if you're eating anything, the dog sits there staring at it and
drooling on your pants.

I know dogs with an allergy, who will spend
all day rubbing their snout on the coach. It means
living in a household where "we can't have anything nice"
or words to that effect. Imagine if your "icicles"
dog developed an allergy and had an itchy face.

I think I'd rather keep goldfish. In the basement. Or the garage.
Then, "what happens in the basement, stays in the basement".

Paul


--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The memory of my own suffering has prevented me from ever shadowing one
young soul with the superstitions of the Christian religion." --
Elizabeth Cady Stanton