Wesley's Tool-Box

Heat problems have plagued the XPPort-II (a.k.a. Portable Athlon II) due to the high-performance components that make up the system, while having too cramped a space to have sufficient cooling applied. The solution was to use heatpipes to move the heat to where it can be properly cooled. Read on to find out how this helped stability and overclocking.

• Pushing the Limits Again

Recently, I managed to buy a Samsung PC2700 512MB DDR-SDRAM (CTL version) that would replace the two KingMax 256MB memory modules. The KingMax failed to make past 170.8MHz even with voltage at 3.2V, and I considered it to be one of the hindrance factor. Now with the Samsung module, I could hit 180.0MHz at fastest memory timings at 3.0V.

To gauge the performance gained, I used MadOnion's 3DMark 2001SE. The following scores were posted without overclocking the video card:

170.8MHz FSB: 10035
180.0MHz FSB: 10447

The FSB increase alone accounted for approximately 400 points of increase. Keeping this in mind, the following scores are the best results obtained under the configuration before and after the mod, while having the same video card driver:

Old Best: 10800
New Best: 11522



Even considering the FSB boost, the new best score beats the old score by at least 300 points, having an overall increase of 700 points. This is sufficient enough to put my system within top five machines configured with AthlonXP 1.55GHz or less and with GeForce4 Ti4200. Considering that most of the high-scoring machines used the Detonator 40.41 driver, which puts out around 300 to 1000 points more than the 29.42 driver I used, I might be able to rank at the top once I get this driver working properly. Note that this score is currently the highest possible score while having the system completely stable. I might be able to squeeze a few more points while compromising stability just to the point that 3DMark barely completes, but that goes against my philosophy...

To conclude, the installation of the heatpipes in the system increased the stability of the overall components while boosting enough headroom to overclock even further to get new performance limits thanks to the lowered temperature provided through efficient cooling. It was something that a cramped up system like mine with limited airflow had just needed.

• Getting the Ramsinks On (cont.)

And the front side gets its share of the ramsinks. One of the ramsinks are slanted here, too, but to avoid the heatpipe next to it this time. Overall, most of the ramsinks get a good coverage of the chips despite the obstacles.

• The Completion

Finally, all heatsinks and heatpipes are installed into the system. The PSU heatpipe system spreads the heat away from the video card, while the video card's heatpipe system cools the GPU with an active AMD-logo'ed fan. Ramsinks support texture memory overclocking. It looks pretty spiffy, but ultimately, the verdict lies in how far I can push it.

• Getting the Ramsinks On

It may be okay to run without ramsinks at standard settings, but obviously, I need to do some overclocking and those bare chips won't stand the heat that it gets out once I crank up the MHz. It's time for some ramsink action!



The black heatsinks that you saw a while ago was now nicely cut into three pieces each. It's nice to live next to the campus that has the hacksaw in the workshop. I prepared a pair of Zalman's colour-coded thermal adhesives for the attachment and cleaned up the surface of the memory chips with lint-free cloth.



The back side now has the ramsinks installed. The top one had to be slanted to cover the memory chip properly while avoiding the heatpipe cooler.

• Installing the PSU Heatpipe

All three bases were installed according to the shape of the heatpipe. The heatpipe is the same thing that are used in the Zalman video card heatpipe coolers; straight from their heatpipe manufacturing facility. The only difference is that I had requested a specific 90-degree bend like this, instead of the usual 180-degree bend.



To finish up, I used the heatsinks from the ZM50-HP. The top left one is the front side heatsink, and the bottom ones are the back side heatsinks. With these three heatsinks acting as one through the heatpipe, I can efficiently spread and dissipate heat, far better than the copper heatsink that used to take place, while actually weighing almost the same. In fact, now I can touch the heatsink without the fear of getting a burn. This was immediately noticeable in the video card, as now the 3D game screen does not show any anomalies even without having the ramsinks attached like the picture above. That's how cooler it is now.