I have a old AMD Athlon M 1200+ I believe it is that I removed from a broken laptop a year ago. The other day I found a old motherboard with the same socket 462 (A) so I can finally make use of the chip. Trouble is I don't know if the chip or this new motherboard work, and I have no heatsink for the CPU. Is there any way I could test the chip without burning it out, just to see if it works so I don't waste any money buying a proper heatsink for it? I have a Intel 775 cooler lying around, if I were to hold that on the chip with some AC5 in between, would that be good enough to let me test the components for a short time? Thanks for any help!
Yes, that Intel cooler would work fine as you describe. In fact, if you could work out a more reliable mounting method you could easily continue to use that cooler indefinitely. That Athlon produces 25 watts of heat; the coolest desktop processor for 775 produces 65 watts and the hottest around 130 watts. It'll be totally sufficient if not ludicrous overkill.
Interesting. Perhaps some bolts through the four holes around the socket could be used to mount the 'sink. I will fiddle around with it, and if I can't find a reliable and safe way to keep the heatsink in place then I will go buy a cheap cooler. BTW I have a whole whack of socket 370 coolers (Which are compatible with socket A IIRC) but most are not very large, but I have a Tt Golden Orb in a Celeron rig I can swap. Ill give some different coolers some tests, because they will make more permanent solutions compared to the 775 cooler. Thanks a lot Bob.
You'll want to be wary of those socket 370 coolers, as 25 watts is approaching the highest heat output of any socket 370 processor. I think a few went up to around 35 watts, but many were as low as 12. You'll also want to be careful of that Golden Orb; I think they have a reputation for crushing the exposed dies on Athlons. I think it depends on the age and version of the Golden Orb. (I think the Golden Orb is the bad one...if it uses a twist-on clamp method, then I'm thinking of the right thing.)
Yup, those had the most ridiculous mounting method ever tbh, twist it 'round on an exposed core! What a concept!
The Golden Orb is currently on a 900mhz PIII Cel that has a exposed core, and I've taken the heatsink on and off numerous times and it hasn't cracked it yet. Have I been lucky? I actually like the simplicity of the design, its just kind of stupid for exposed cores as I'm sure Tt found out later.
