Slot-A CPU didn't run hot!

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cyclone3d

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Yep.. that's right.. Slot-A Athlons didn't really run that hot.. we just had really lousy cooling solutions back then. Even the Alpha monter of a cooler was nothing compared to even stock CPU coolers of today.

Anyhow, I rigged up a Opty 175 low profile 4-heatpipe stock heatsink/fan to work on a Slot-A Athlon processor.

All it took was 4 bolts and elongating two of the holes in the Athlon heat spreader to make it work.

The heatspreader berely even gets warm.. even under full load... and the heatsink doesn't get warm either.. and the fan is running at low speed also.

Back in the day.. I had one of those Alpha coolers with 2x60mm Delta fans and it and the processor would get burning hot.

Now I am gonna overclock this 750 (900 core with 3ns cache) as far as the L2 cache will let me go... 1105Mhz or a bit higher is about max what it should run at.

I don't expect it to warn up more than 1-2c when overclocked.
 
Old school CPU meets new school tech. Throw in some OC action and let the good times roll.

Let us know how high you hit.
 
Well, it is up to 10x108 right now.... so 1080Mhz, but I bet the BIOS doesn't actually set it at exactly 108Mhz for the bus speed.

I was hoping the board supported the 10.5x multipler, but I couldn't get it to post at all so I guess it doesn't.

I am getting ready to put Sandra on it to see what it says it is really running at.

From what I can tell, either the CPU is about maxed out, the motherboard can't supply enough amperage, the motherboard is maxed for bus speed, or the power supply is not powerful enough to make it go any faster.

It has a 250w Dell in it right now.. and I have a cheapie 400w I can throw in it in a bit to see if it will go any higher.
 
Well, 1080Mhz looks like the max... at least on this motherboard.

I am gonna try to up the L2 cache speed tp 2/5 from 1/3. It is 3ns.. rated to run at 333Mhz. Right now it is at 366Mhz, which is the normal 10% given on this stuff to definitely be able to run at. Upping it to 2/5 will give me a speed of 432Mhz on the L2 cache.. probably not gonna happen... but the last Slot-A CPU with the external L2 cache that I overclocked, I had at 1.13Ghz on an Abit KA7-100 and it had the 3.3ns cache.

But, after looking at a few other overclocking threads from back in the day, it looks like at least one person even had the 4ns stuff running at 360-something.

Hehe.. with the V5-5500 overclocked to 180 in this thing I get a bit over 4k in 3dmark 2000 and about 1700 in 3dmark 2001.

One other thing.. I ended up putting the 400w power supply in it because the -12v was only reporting around -11.34 and the system would lock up when I tried to check the -5v.

With the 400w, the -12v is at about 11.9 and the -5v is right about -5v and not locking up the system anymore.
 
Oh man, the things you make me want to do.....

Too bad I'm at college, or I would be rigging together my old Socket A.

Maybe you can find a motherboard hack. AKA soldering some things together to up the voltage. =)

Next time I'm home, I found myself a weekend project. =D

I've got an extra Thermaltake XP-90 at home that was beautifully lapped. I think it actually comes with the adaptation for a socket A board. If not, We'll make it fit. It ran my 3700+ OCed to 3.8 at a comfy 36*C at full load, 28*C idle.

This will be quite fun, thanks cyclone3d for putting bad ideas in my head. =D
 
I don't think a volt mod would help at all.. the K7M board and most early Slot A boards were known for not being able to do anything past 110 fsb... and 110 you were lucky to get.

When running a 0.25m 500 (with 650 core), I was able to post at 112fsb.. but I highly doubt it would have been able to run stabily in Windows.

108fsb ain't bad for this board and to get that I had to up the chipset voltage to 2.54.

110fsb would boot into Windows.. and I could even run some Sandra benchmarks on it.. but it wasn't stable enough to even run Internet Explorer.

And the processor is running at 2.05v

I just wish the 1050 setting would work (10.5 x 100 or 5.25 x 200 depending on the way you look at the processor fsb).

I also have a K7V-T motherboard.. but it doesn't work :-(... grrrr, I wanted to try the Kx-133 chipset to see how high I could get the processor. And being able to run the RAM at 133Mhz would have been nice also. But it doesn't have an ISA slot anyhow so it wouldn't have been a viable option for my retro system anyhow.
 
nofit320.jpg

Yeah, oldschool coolers... a dinky 50 or 60mm fan blowing directly onto an aluminum heatsink made of screwed in pins!

No heatpipes, no fins, no side-mounted fans so the air could pass through the heatsink without obstruction instead of blowing directly onto the bottom of it...
 
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