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cooling old pentium??

dbarton

Senior member

I have an old Pentium MMX 200 machine that still gets used for a special app with Win95. It has a fan on the CPU which has gotten very noisy.

As far as I recall fans were optional back then, so I wonder if I can just disable the fan, and just leave it's heat sink on.

If I did, how can I monitor CPU temperature to be sure that's okay in Win 95?

 
no, fans were optional on maybe lower model 486's.

that being said, not much was required to cool a pentium. why don't you just unscrew the old fan and buy a cheapie fan and hot glue or screw it on if old pentium heatsinks are harder to find. attachment method doesn't matter much as long as its reasonably secure. hell you can even plug it into molex or a fan speed controller if you want😛 or even just get an 80mm internal case fan...or make one yourself by bending one of those pci bracket covers and gluuing/attaching a fana to it so that it blows at the cpu.

zalman bracket fan
http://www.provantage.com/zalm...ech-fb123~7ZALM02A.htm
zee cheapness
 

When I touch the heatsink it only seems barely warm, so I wonder if that's good enough??

I tried to install a temp sensor program but needed a newer version of Win95 than I have..
Hmonitor and Speedfan both won't run.
 
Fans were optional for the 486 and older...not so much for the P5 proc.

Because of high core voltage and large die size, the P5/60 ran very hot with the supplied heatsink + heatspreader, and the fan was almost optional (but many OEM boxes added the fan anyway for warranty purposes...or more precisely, to not have to do replacement work on $800 procs). The faster P5s benefitted greatly by the fan.

With the P5 MMX series, voltage was reduced to 3.3, and the die was dropped to 0.6 microns. Regardless, all MMX procs were sold with integrated heatsink + fan.

In other words, it's probably only a matter of time before you kill the proc if you disconnect the fan.
 
>Regardless, all MMX procs were sold with integrated heatsink + fan.

This one is definitely not an integrated fan. Looks like a low cost third party add on attached to a small heat sink. I don't even have thermal grease on it at all, and it still seems only warm to the touch. Is there any rough test I could do, such as just disconnect the fan, and put my finger on heat sink and see if it stays cool to the touch for 10 mins or something. It feels like its slightly warm, no more..

I know, pretty low tech. It's a pentium MMX p55c 220mhz.

Will it just act up and lock up if it gets too hot? Or instant trouble? I do now see they were sold with and without fan.

 
I think you'll be ok without a fan directly on the heat sink. Keep positive ventilation on the case though. A 120mm fan in the back should be sufficient.
 

The case is open all the time.
I just disconnected the fan, so I'll touch it in 20 mins and see what happens.

 
Originally posted by: dbarton
>Regardless, all MMX procs were sold with integrated heatsink + fan.

This one is definitely not an integrated fan. Looks like a low cost third party add on attached to a small heat sink. I don't even have thermal grease on it at all, and it still seems only warm to the touch. Is there any rough test I could do, such as just disconnect the fan, and put my finger on heat sink and see if it stays cool to the touch for 10 mins or something. It feels like its slightly warm, no more..

I know, pretty low tech. It's a pentium MMX p55c 220mhz.

Will it just act up and lock up if it gets too hot? Or instant trouble? I do now see they were sold with and without fan.

well 3rd party was used by oems. only retail cpus come with intel coolers, it doesn't mean its unecessary.

why are you so resistant to just replacing the fan. what is it?? 40mm? 50? just google up one, its probably less than 5 bucks. esp if you just go to the local computer store.
 

Was hoping to avoid the noise.. That little fan was loud even in the best of times..
Got kinda hot over the last hr, so I suppose I need one.
 
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