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Keeping that CPU cool! By Red Squirrel ![]() Old fan ready to be removed for the new one to be put in When you buy a CPU, it will usually come with a heat sink and a fan. These are mostly temporarily, even under normal conditions. It WILL die soon. Sometimes you can get lucky, but why take the chance? When it starts making strange noises, it’s time to replace it as quick as possible - before it forces you to replace your CPU as well! ![]() Closeup of old fan. Notice the tape - it was required to stop the rattling, which worked for a few hours at a time before new tape had to be applied! Replacing a CPU heatsink/fan combo is fairly easy. It is best to remove any hardware near the CPU before proceeding, even at removing the old one. In my case, the ram was very close, so I removed it. Also, it’s good to push away IDE cables if they are in the way. Once the area is cleared, it’s simply the thing of removing the old heat sink. This picture will attempt to display how it should be done. The worse thing that can happen is that your screw driver hits the motherboard and cuts off a transistor or something. That’s very bad! This way will minimize that chance if you are careful. ![]() Too quickly done pic of mounting/unmounting a heat sink Once it is removed, it is good to remove any paste that might still be on the CPU. Installation of the Volcano is very easy. Simply remove the protective tape and there is already some “thermal paste” which is a sticker, and it does the job, for better results you may want to add your own paste, but I didn’t when I installed mine. Do not forget to unplug the old CPU first, and once the new one is installed, don’t forget to plug it in!!! Otherwise, you will see smoke after a few seconds of operation – bad thing! The volcano is very quiet compared to stock fans. In fact, the sound that it does make is much more smooth and less high pitched, and is not a bunch of rattling and humming like the stock fans tend to do. When I had the stock fan, I had to downclock since my temps were getting too high for my taste, at a hot 60C-60C average. With the Volcano, I was running at a cool 49C and now that I overclocked back to the factory setting, my CPU runs at 58C under 100% constant load. (distributed computing project on 24/7). I hope you enjoyed this article! Red Squirrel IceTeks Senior server-side administrator Next Page
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