PCTech Forums

Being a standard HS,i dont think you will have any trouble removing it.It really comes down to what was used (if anything) between the HS and CPU.

For a recommendation,take a look at the .Nice setup at a pretty good price.

Athlon XP cores are very easy to crack. You probably will not have any problems with removing the old heatsink, but it is a good possibility you'll damage it when putting a new one on. I know plenty of expirianced users who have killed their brand new Athlon XP when installng a heatsink.

Why do you think you need a new heatsink? Unless you have processor temps over 65 degrees celcius, or the overclocking bug is REALLY after you, I'd suggest leaving it alone.

You can even overclock without a heatsink upgrade. I baught the retail pack athlon xp 2500+ which came with a generic heatsink. I was able to overclock to a 3400+ with the standard heatsink that AMD provided me with. My CPU temp gets to 62 with a full load now, but it runs very stable, and I have not had any problems.

teststrips,did you have to do the bridge mod to unlock the multiplier?

actually I only increased the FSB. The 2500+ was a 166mhz bus, which i was able to overclock to somewhere around 210mhz with only a minor voltage bump in the bios.

for those of you who don't knwo overclock terminology. 2 ways to overclock..

#1 is to increase the Front Side Bus or FSB. Most motherboards will allow you to do this. In order to make it run more than 10% faster you generally have to give it a bit more power... or increase the voltage.

#2 is to increase the multiplier. The multipier is the amount of increase your CPU runs over the FSB. Lets say for easy math, you have a 1ghz cpu, and it runs at a 100 Mhz FSB. 1 ghz is 1000 mhz, so that's 10X faster than the FSB, or you've got a 10X multipier. Changing this setting is done via some very small, pretty complex jumpers on the CPU itself. It's very difficult, and you can easily ruin your CPU, but you generally can get better overclocking results.

I'm afraid that my pc has become very unstable which I feel is due to the high temps my cpu runs at. Even when idle my cpu runs at around 65 degrees C and when stressed crashes out and reboots.
So as a result I've decided to invest in some cooling measures such as installing a new HSF, a new 92mm exhaust fan to replace my 80mm one and a nice new cool low noise PSU.
I'm still a little uncertain as to why my cpu runs at such a high temp though!? I guess it is possible that my stock HSF was not installed correctly and the fact that i duct taped a 80mm exhaust to my 92mm bracket may have something to do with it