BEHOLD! WallPC!
I recently found myself in need of a living room computer. Into my spare parts box I dove, and out I emerged, victorious, with 2.8 hyperthreaded GHz of Pentium 4 glory, an Intel D865PERL board, 2 GB of DDR400 memory, and an AGP NVIDIA FX5200 256MB. Not having a spare case, and not really wanting one cluttering up my apartment's living area, I kludged those parts together with a no-name power supply and DVD-ROM, along with an ethernet card (the origins of which are an absolute mystery to me) and an old 250GB hard drive, then kludged all that onto an old cork board with push pins and zip ties. It's been quite the conversation piece so far:
The monitor runs at 1024x768 and is old enough that when bought, LCD displays were a new thing. Nailed to the wall, hidden behind the screen, are a old set of "iPod speakers" the kind with the integrated dock that chews up 4 AA batteries in about 30 minutes. Fortunately, they have an auxiliary input, and work much better with the AC adapter.
Total cash outlay so far: $0.00
The first problem to emerge was an intermittent but obnoxious loud buzzing sound. The culprit turned out to be this VGA fansink:
The fansink was cool to the touch, so back into my parts box I went, where I pulled a socket 775 board with lightning damage that was rescued from a system left by my complex's dumpster. A little work with pliers and vice grips, and I had successfully liberated an appropriately sized heatsink.
Holy exploding northbridge batman!
The missing piece of the northbridge chip was fused with the bottom of the heatsink. I resorted to a hammer and chisel to get it off.
It gouged horrifically.
I did not fix it.
Still seems to work alright with some new TIM though. Pin spacing was even correct.
Here is where I'm looking for your help. The CPU fan runs at over 3000 RPM, and is now the loudest component in a system designed to run essentially all the time in my primary living space, right at head level. It's actually quieter than you would expect, but not quiet enough. Now, I recently installed a Corsair H60 in my primary system, which leaves me with this OEM i7 cooler available:
The cooler visible in the background is also available. It's another pull from the lightning damaged system. I know nothing about it other than that it fits socket 775 and it's made by Cooler Master. Not even the model. The i7 cooler's 130W TDP is massively overkill for the 70W Northwood core P4, so I'm hoping to get a double header of reduced noise and some of the overclocking that I seem to remember P4s being known for in their day. The problem is that this is where it needs to go:
I'm an engineering student, and have access to a machine shop, so I can cut a hunk off of the heatsink to clear the capacitor bank, but I have no promising ideas for how to actually hold the cooler against the board, and I really don't want to remove the square black plastic anchor for the OEM unit until I have a sure solution. Anyone here have any ideas?
, since any time you can put it back(it's hold in place with some kind of push-pins/removable plastic rivets), and it can be removed/re-attached(carefully) without any damage to the MB or HSF holder.
). It should work without problems, unless the plastic became brittle over time.
