Time to bring out the 4-40 tap and make some threads. Be very careful here. You don't want to mess this up or you'll end up with a useless Alpha heatsink. Well, you could still use it for your Celeron. :-)

Now would be a good time to think about what you're going to use as L2 cache space filler. The Alpha P125 doesn't have vents for L2 cache cooling like the Global Win VEK 12. If you wish to cool your L2 cache, you'll have to fill in the gap between the heatsink and the L2 cache. 

I try to keep this project simple and inexpensive. I don't want to have to go to a machine shop and pay allot of money just to have a L2 spacer machined for me. So I went looking around the shop to see what would work.

What I found that was the correct thickness was a hard drive cage! You know, the cage that holds your hard drive? I removed an old hard drive cage off a case that was not being used and cut that into a bunch of nice rectangles. All you need is one since the L2 cache on the PIII is just on one side of the PCB. The metal used for hard drive cages are pretty easy to cut. 

Here you see the L2 spacer at work. This works better than the VEK 12, which just blows air at the L2 cache. Cooling by contact is always better than cooling by just blowing air. Don't forget to put thermo compound between the sink, spacer and L2 cache. 

Now that you got your L2 spacers in place, it's time to put it all together. Get the bolts and washer and screw the PIII to the Alpha. Do not go too tight. It's very easy to warp the PCB. It's best to have a friend help you here. You can turn the screws on the PIII while your friend keeps an eye on the CPU and tell you how far to screw down.

Next page: Slotting It In