Project 527
Keeping Your Cool At 527Mhz
My SL2YK PII-300 is a "Box" CPU. This means
that it's a retail unit that comes in a box *no kidding*.
Box units generally overclock better than OEM units.
However box units also comes with a stock heatsink and fan which is pretty small. The fan
cover makes it look bigger than it really is. Once I removed the fan cover and saw the
heatsink, I couldn't believe that this thing could keep the CPU cool. So the stock
heatsink/fan was the first thing to go.
 
Stock PII heatsink with fan cover on and off.
A word of warning: If you remove
the factory heatsink you will lose the 3 year Intel warranty, so make sure you can live
without it first.
The stock heatsink is held on the CPU by 4 Torx bolts. The best way to remove them is to
use a #8 Torx bit. However, you can also use a small Alan key. Be very careful if you use
an Alan key because those bolts can be easily stripped! Also don't push the Alan key in
too far. The holes that the key goes into are hollow. If you push the key all the way in,
you will hit the CPU inside and may kill it!
After removing the bolts, you'll find the heatsink still doesn't come off. Besides being
bolted, it's also glued. Twist the heatsink back and forth to break the glue.
Once the heatsink is off, remove the left over heatsink
glue off the CPU and you can install your new heatsink. Make sure you use heatsink
compound between the heatsink and the CPU. The Global Win unit I used came with a heatsink
pad but that's not as good. Don't use both the pad and compound. It's one or the other. I
modify the Global Win heatsink by adding 2 more fans to cover the outer sinks.
 
Global Win Heatsink/Fan before and after mods
While this heatsink had no problems keeping the CPU
cool when running at 504Mhz, I decided that something extra special was going to be needed
to have the CPU run stable at 527Mhz. With that in mind I decide to
"Celeronized" the PII-300 by ripping the case off the unit.
A word of warning: If you remove the factory casing you
will lose the 3 year Intel warranty, so make sure you can live without it first. Then
again, you already killed off your warranty when you ripped off the heatsink. :-)
Ripping off the case really isn't that hard. The unit
is held together by 4 pins on the outer corners. All you need is a screw driver and some
guts! To find out step by step how to remove the case, go to HardOCP. They have a
really nice article on it. I'll let Kyle explain how it's done, so if you blow it up, you
can blame him :)
The advantage of removing the case is that you can
better cool the L2 cache of the PII. The stock unit's L2 cache does not come into contact
with the heatsink. By removing the case, I was able to put in 2 aluminum spacers to fill
in the gap between the L2 cache and the heatsink (You can use coins if you don't have
access to a machine shop).
 
Ripping the case off the PII. Not for the weak of heart to try!
 This
is how the de-cased CPU looks with the new heatsink/fan installed. Looks allot more
impressive than the stock unit, that's for sure! It's like over 3 times bigger. :-)
The new heatsink/fan is working really well. Before the
CPU got quite warm when running at 504Mhz with the stock heatsink/fan (Yes, it really ran
at 504Mhz with the stock unit!). Now it's not even warm to the touch when running at
527Mhz! I got this unit quite awhile ago from Tom Mosher's SDS Mark II for $28 (They are no longer in business). The
price has since been lowered to $19.95. You can also get this heatsink from Computer Nerd. They sell it under the "Cool
It Dude" line of coolers.
Since this picture was taken I have added a small
heatsink to the back of the CPU to help cool the tag ram chip (I think that's what it's
call). The unit is now running rock stable at 527Mhz with 2.1 Volts.
Go To Cooling The TNT
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