Cooling a Northwood PIV without the heat spreader
 

I used to have a Northwood 1.8GHz running quite happily at 2.7GHz, but I had to retire it after a botched mod on the heat spreader left it making improper contact with the core. The resulting in temps were 10-20'C too high even when I clocked it back down to 1.8GHz. Is it possible to ditch the heat spreader all together and use a cooler on the bare core of a Northwood 1.8GHz? I've got either the original Intel cooler that came in the PIV retail box, or a Swiftech MCX4000.

Yepp!

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1087/

What´s a botched mod?

regards
Mikael S.

I was trying to replace the original thermal grease under the spreader with Arctic Silver III. Apparently, I never managed to get the spreader back into proper contact with the core.

PS: Interesting article. Now.. has anyone tried running a bare core Northwood in a Shuttle XPC? How does the heat-pipe doodad in them work with the slightl lower height of the PIV?

You may have to mod the mounting hardware, for example I had to sand the stand-offs, and the screws which tap-out into the bottom of those stand-offs on a Thermalright SLK-947-U to get the heatsink to fit afetr removing the IHS. I've removed two. one from a 2.4C, and one froma 3.0C, and I have heard using Arctic Silver-III's Silver Epoxy (a very tiny bit) between IHS and core will give you an excellent contact point, great thermal trsnfer (better then any TIM) and will revert to the original height. There's about a 2mm difference in heaight as the photo's attached will exemplify.

:)

I think I'll try using the AS thermal epoxy to put the IHS back on. There's fewer variables involved. If it works, I'll even be able to put it into a Shuttle; if it doesn't work, I'm budgeted for an AMD Shuttle cruncher rig anyway.