pentium 166 w/o fan?

[dfi]

Is it safe to run my pentium 166 without the attached (glued on it seems) heatsink/fan? Dug that sucker out and thought I'd give it a bit of action, but the little darn cpu fan is louder than I remembered it. I'm thinking of just unplugging the fan, but I wouldn't want to fry the little sucker. Anyone tried this before?

dfi

 

[Wiz]

Most of the P133 cpu's I ever saw just had a heat sink on them - no fan
166's and up started having fans but if you have a good heat sink and some air moving over it you might be ok
If not, you haven't lost much. Lots of people around here have an old cpu like that you could probably get for the cost of shipping.
I've got some P90's, a 133, a 166 and a 233mmx here.

 

[Sean453]

Yeah I was looking inside the case of my very old IBM P133 system and I saw there was no fan. I was a little surprised by that. Just a heatsink. It will probably be fine w/o the fan.

 

[dfi]

I wonder how good the retail heatsink is. I would feel bad underclocking it... I mean, it's already so slow!

dfi

 

[Lonyo]

Got a Dell P166 with weird heatsink on it (large and odd shape compared to what we have today) but no fan.

 

[TwilightZone77]

I have an old (Gateway 2000) Pentium 166 @ 200 that doesn't use a fan. The heatsink that's on it doesn't even seem to be very large either. It runs entirely stable. So I dunno, YMMV. Heck, my old p2-350 doesn't even use a fan, although it has a huge heatsink on it.

 

[dfi]

Originally posted by: TwilightZone77
I have an old (Gateway 2000) Pentium 166 @ 200 that doesn't use a fan. The heatsink that's on it doesn't even seem to be very large either. It runs entirely stable. So I dunno, YMMV. Heck, my old p2-350 doesn't even use a fan, although it has a huge heatsink on it.

Ya, the default heatsink on there looks pretty wimpy. I would feel a lot better if I had some way of checking the temps. Oh well, it'll probably be ok.

dfi

 

[EKAtBzboyz]

yeah it should be fine
almost all of them came wtih no fans

 

[deerslayer]

My Gateway P133 had no fan either, ran just fine.

 

[DoctorBooze]

Well, I wouldn't bet on it without a fan; OK compared to today's HSFs what you got on a Pentium was weedy, but then a classic P166 would only produce about 13W. "Only". I went and said it. That's still quite a lot of heat and if you only have a small heatsink, it'll still roast quick enough. Say you don't want temps much more than 26W hotter than ambient, you need a 2C/W heatsink if you don't use a fan. Most socket A HSFs are under 1C/W, so go and grab a spare one, take the fan off it, and you'll be OK

 

[DoctorBooze]

Oh darn your wee HSF is glued on. So, no, keep the fan on, if you take it off it'll probably fry. Would you be asking if you could take the fan off your Athlon system heatsink? Bear in mind that even P166 was a leader once...

 

[dfi]

I'm mostly thinking that since I have a spare socket A heatsink, I could just put that on there with some arctic silver. I'm really scared of screwing up the chip trying to pry that hsf off of it though. I know, it's only 10 bux for another one, but that's 10 bux I'd like to save.

dfi

 

[RickH]

If it's an Intel 166 your OK without a fan--AMD NO. RRRRRRRR

 

[Dud3]

Well, considering that a neighbors Gayway Celly 300MHz had a passive HS on it, you should be able to put a larger HS without a fan on your P166. Just make sure you have some air moving through the case.

 

[AkumaX]

got a p3 600 katmai on a passive heatsink

 

[networkman]

Quite a few of the older Compaq cases came designed ducted airflow to the Pentium chip with just a heatsink on it, so I'd say with good airflow, you wouldn't need a fan, though a heatsink would still be a good idea.

FWIW, I still periodically find P166 systems at my work where, when we're doing maintainance, we open up the case and find the fan on the HSF has stopped completely.. and for how long, who knows?