This is how the new Alpha P3125 looks from the under side. There is a nice copper base to mount the Pentium 3 on. Copper transfer heat faster than aluminum. The surface is  really smooth and clean. Still we decided to lap it with 1500 grit wet sandpaper to see if we can get it smoother. It didn't, so don't bother.

The next step is to make a L2 cache spacer to fill in the gap between the heatsink and the P3 L2 cache. When overclocking an Intel CPU, it's normally the L2 cache that is holding it back and not the CPU itself. By filling in the gap and making the L2 cache touch the  heatsink, you are helping to keep the L2 cache cool.

The spacer we used came off the end of an old Global Win FAB28 Celeron heatsink. We found that it filled the gap perfectly. Of course you can always have a machine shop makes some spacers for you if you're willing to pay the money. It sure would look a lot  better than what we came up with. But our little spacer works so there.:-)

Apply heatsink compound on both side of the space. This will fill in any air gaps that might be there and aid in the transfer of heat off the L2 cache.

Here is the spacer in action. The gap between the L2 cache and the heatsink has been filled nicely. Now all we need to do is mount the Alpha on the CPU without that heat trapping backplate.

Next page: Putting it all together

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