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Caution about AMD socket 754, 929, etc.

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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Jan 11, 2007
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Pacific Northwest, USA
I have an old Socket 754 system here that I occasionally power up to do some rare tasks. Recently, I kept getting thermal shutdown issues, which was a bit perplexing as I don't load the thing down. Yesterday, I popped the top on the case and had a look-see. Much to my surprise, the retention tabs on the heatsink mounting had completely broken off, leaving heatsink and fan flopping around. In fact, the whole plastic bracket is brittle and I can break bits off with my fingers.

Fortunately, the retention bracket is available and inexpensive. But I thought this was worth a caution.

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The Scythe universal (steel) brackets are discontinued, but frozencpu.com apparently still has them in stock.
 
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I've not had issues with the hooks breaking off in any case other than going Conan on it when installing the heatsink. But I guess they are getting to be that age where plastic becomes brittle after years of heat abuse.
 
The surprising thing to me is that these retention brackets weren't done with PA6 glass-filled nylon.

I haven't had any problems with socket 462/ socket A boards; if you're ambitious, it's possible to modify one of those boards to take the Athlon XP-M (mobile) CPU. The benefit is that the multiplier isn't locked, as it is on the Athlon XP CPUs.
 
I had one break as well a few years back. Most likely it was a cheap aftermarket bracket. The system will slow down or shut down when the CPU gets hot so nothing breaks (unlike early Athlons).

If you want a hotrod Athlon XP you might as well get a motherboard with 400 FSB and the last gen XP 3200+ CPU with 400 FSB since they are inexpensive. I think the mobile XP's top off at 333 FSB.
 
Chuck
I'msure it is because you've been erasing too many EPROMs. A little bit of ozone each time and plastic fails!!
:) Dwight
 
My board only has a 333mhz bus. The croatian chip is an xp 2600+, and worked, once I got my act together. I'm just happy I have a working board. In general I won't even consider a mobo unless it's SEALED nos. But people lie. My bag was opened. Sometimes people just have to gaze upon something brand new and open it. Sometimes they use it for whatever length of time then put it back in the bag. Then it becomes born-again NOS. Not an official ebay category that I know of. But there are loads of products that undergo a true religious experience. They may even have some residual baptismal moisture lingering about. Maybe that's what's meant by seller refurbished. The refurbisher just happens to be God though. And automatically it's kosher for pesach too.
 
I buy whatever looks interesting and is cheap so used. Sometimes you need to replace a capacitor but no big deal. You can find old server boards still NIB on ebay (somebody kept them as spares and were never needed I assume).
 
update

I finally received my Scythe "Universal Retention Kit" today. Very nicely done; all metal. Went onto the the Socket 754 board easily and fits precisely. Instructions say that it fits Socket LGA775, 1156,1366 (Intel) and 754, 939, 940, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1.

Frozencpu.com still has a few in stock. Other vendors seem to have discontinued them.

The interesting thing is that the original (plastic) backplate was also starting to disintegrate. And here I thought that all backplates were metal...
 
Frozencpu is still around? I haven't heard that name since I was doing UV mods to my antec case in 2004/2005.
 
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