80mm Duron Sink Mod - spodesabode.com archive

My main rig runs a Duron 650 CPU, and the little pig refuses to overclock. In the absence of any cash to get another CPU, I decided to make this PC as quiet as possible. I already have a Quiet PC silent drive enclosure, and a temperature controlled PSU fan. This leaves the CPU as the only thing to be cooled, before this mod I had a grommet mounted 80mm YS Tech fan, painted red, on the back of the chassis, and a Coolermaster Thunderbird sink on the CPU. This little lot kept my CPU at a nice frosty 35 degrees under full load. I decided to doctor an old sink I had, one that was almost identical to the one I was using, but had fewer fins, and a YS Tech 60mm fan, rather than the no name 60mm on the one that I was using. This sink on its own kept my CPU at 43 degrees.

What I wanted to do was to put an 80mm fan on this sink. I took off the old fan, and the plastic widget that it screwed into. This left the outside fins with clips on to hold the plastic widget. My idea was to bend these out, and clip them onto an 80mm fan. Unfortunately this didn’t work as the middle fins fouled the fan. I decided that a bit of short ducting would be the best thing, as this would also reduce noise even further. I used an old 80mm fan for the duct, cutting out the fan parts and just leaving the frame round the edge. This clipped onto the heatsink very well, it needed a little squeeze at the sides, and it made a good tight fit.

I bolted the 80mm fan on top. I used an 80mm Evercool 4 pin fan, which cost me a grand total of 2 quid. This pushes 29CFM, which should be plenty I thought. I put the finger guard I took from my case fan on top, more for aesthetics than anything else. One problem I encountered at this point was the clip. It wouldn’t go on the heatsink, so I had to bend the fins back straight, and put the clip on, and bend them out again. With a little more foresight this could have been avoided, but I don’t think it has weakened the metal. I then lapped the bottom of the sink a little for good luck, and slapped it on my chip.

All of these temps are taken with the sensor under the chip, using MBM5, at full load after an hour. Whilst I cannot guarantee that they are accurate, the differences between the temperatures should be accurate.

As the temperatures show, the cooler performs better after the mod, and not so far off the performance of the higher spec cooler. 40 degrees is a good low temperature for a Duron, and this sink could take a much higher spec processor without any trouble.

The noise is much reduced, the rushing air sounds are cut down, and the frequency of the noise is a lot lower and much less annoying. I am running the fan from its 4 pin connector, at the standard 12 volts. I could run it at 7, or replace it with a quieter fan, (an 80 mil 19cfm 12dba Pabst would be nice) but the result with this very cheap fan is very good, and as a side effect I get a really mean looking huge cooler that looks the mutts nuts through my case window, and isn’t going to crush my die either.