The force was with me.

[Tazman]

Instructions on how to screw up a perfectly great system.

Let me work on it.

Thank God this was my computer I was working on and not a customer's or I'd be out some bucks.

I started out just to swap cases with the Chieftec Soho Silver(with window) from an Antec Soho. I had just cleaned out the insides of my case of dust 2 weeks ago so I was pretty surprised to see dust bunnies clogged in my fins on the Volcano 7+ . So I figured that I would do the job right and pull the heatsink off and clean her up for the new case.

I guess when I put the heatsink back on, I put way too much pressure on it and chipped the corner of the die on my XP1800+ . Come on, I know better than to force anything on a computer but haste made waste in this case (get it, case ) and now I have a dead processor.

So here's the new system specs. Y'all tell me if this ain't a pity - I guess if I don't joke about it I might take a sledge to it .

Chieftec Silver Soho
Soyo Dragon Platinum 333
1 Freakin GHz Duron dug up from my basement spare parts container
CoolMaster HCC-002 HS/F w/AS3 (gotta lap the Volcano 7+ - go figure, it's scratched )
768MB PC2700 DDR (3x256)
Leadtek GeForce 4 4200 w/ TIVO, 128MB DDR
2x 60GB Maxtor ATA133 drives in a RAID 0
Etc.

Anyhew, I'm posting this not to whine about my mistake (I'll be getting an XP2400+ as a replacement soon enough) but to remind all of us of the dire consequesnces of haste / force when installing a HS/F on an AMD system. I build only AMD - based systems and only did this once before on a 1.3GHz Athalon awhile back. I shudda learnes that time .

The sad thing is that I'm posting this on my new laptop that I figure is what, 2 1/2 times faster - DOH!

Oh, BTW, I now can recommend something I figured as needless before - nonconductive shims on a processor. I just ordered up a dozen. That $10 shim could've saved me $100+.

Just a reminder all, we can all make simple mistakes, no matter how many boxes we put together.

Mike

[Redwolf]

Hey, at least you didn't kill it by forgetting to put the HS on in the first place!

[Bob The Great]

Thats a nice system. Sure the 1Ghz is slow compaired to a lot of systems. Heck, my "slow" system is a 1Ghz, but it's still amazingly fast!

Post some benchmarks when you get that new CPU

[aviax]

I've been looking at the exact same system. What can you tell me about it? If you don't mind, that is...

What are you using it for?

How well is it doing those things?

See, the thing is I haven't seen any reviews of this system and I'm intensely curious. It just seems too good to be true, especially at the price!

Anything you can tell me would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, and thanks for the lesson, as well!

[Ming]

I had a similar experience yesterday working on a computer. I pulled a heatsink off to put on some artic alumina and put on a faster fan for the Volcano 6. Well, when putting the heatsink back on, the screwdriver slipped out of the retention clip and it hit the video card. Well, I was using enough force to leave an impression of the screwdriver in the PCB. Needless to say, the video card (a modified Geforce 2MX) is now toast.

[EndobioticChaos]

Bah... I keep crossing my fingers and hoping I'll stay lucky and avoid screwdriver accidents while installing the HSF. Sorry about your luck.

[Scott Tiger]

Well, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that makes mistakes like this.. I toasted a perfectly good 950 Celery by forcing the heat sink on it. Needless to say I wasn't very happy about it. Guess it some how makes me feel better to know that I'm not the only person how makes such mistakes. I'm an AMD guy myself but I did replace that 950 with a 1.0 Celery and it came with a cantilevered HSF clip that pretty much was fool proof. I was a little skeptical of it a first since the little thing was completely make of plastic but it worked like a charm. No forcing, no prying. Just clip it on, lock it down and then attach the fan. I wish more HSF's were like this one. You just can't go wrong with a simple little mechanism like this one...

[Tazman]

Ming- Oh not the screwdriver slipping . I only did it once installing a heatsink. The screwdriver slipped and went straight into the dimm slot on a brand spanking new Asus A7A266 (did I say RMA ). My workaround for this is to take a floppy disk and place it at a 30º angle as close to the socket as possible and then..........be careful. I figure I should be able to regain control of a slipped screwdriver as it slips and nicks the floppy instead of scrapping the motherboard. This trick hasn't been tested yet as I haven't had the screwdriver slip. Yet .

I couldn't agree more with Scott. You'd think someone would design a heatsink clip that would eliminate this.

aviax - I'll pm you with some of my thoughtson the 8880 later and I'm gonna start at thread later about it because I've noticed quite a few inquiries about Sgaer, Powernotebooks, and the 8880 recently from members. I'll leave it as this for now, the lappie has more freakin' features on it that even I am at a loss to figure out all the bells and whistles at once. I spent yesterday afternoon playing around with the dual display and the TIVO recording - watching the Cup race on the secondary 15" LCD display. I wasted about three hours doing this - I deserved it though as I was still licking my wounds about the above mentioned processor.

Bob, I'm gonna post my benchmarks with the Duron. I don't normally overclock but I think I'm gonna push this cpu to see what it can do. If I fry it, it's only $40. It'll give me something to do while I wait for the new one .

Mike