Heat Sink Mounting
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Below you'll find detailed instructions on how to add a heat sink or water block to that KT7 Socket A motherboard. Eric not only gave you the principals, but exactly what you need to buy, what tools you need, and step by step pictures to keep ya from having any doubts. So instead of me rambling up here, I'll turn this over to Eric and let him run the show....
Mounting a Heatsink on a Socket A CPU
As smart as we like to think we are here at OCA (yeah right), from time to time we get emails where we just have to say "Damn, that's a killer idea". This is one such occasion. A reader by the name of Eric wrote us about this and we asked him if he'd like to throw something together so we could pass it on to you guys. Boy did Eric come thru!
Below you'll find detailed instructions on how to add a heat sink or water block to that KT7 Socket A motherboard. Eric not only gave you the principals, but exactly what you need to buy, what tools you need, and step by step pictures to keep ya from having any doubts. So instead of me rambling up here, I'll turn this over to Eric and let him run the show....
How to mount a water block or HS/F to your Socket A mobo.
Those holes on some Socket A motherboards can be very useful if you need to clamp down a water block or if a HS/F cant fit because of capacitors or if you put a cold plate under it.
Here’s the problem that I had:


The big problem was I just couldn’t get that big HSF on the KT7-Raid. It should fit on an ASUS (or some of the other boards without the holes) as well as the boards out there that don’t have the capacitors in the way and/or have the socket A rotated 90° compared to the Abit.
I did some staring at the mobo and figured I should be able to something with these holes around the CPU socket.


I did a little reading to see if I could get around the problem. AMD’S Technical Document titled “Thermal, Mechanical and Chassis Cooling Design Guide” was pretty helpful but simple.
Here's the link: http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/techdocs/pdf/23794.pdf
The holes are .24" in diameter and spaced 1.423" and 2.602" (the diagonal is 2.966")
Here’s a diagram of the holes:

(You can download a full scale autocad file below.)
Here's the tools you will need:
drill
Hammer
Hacksaw
metal file
drill bits 1/16 to 17/64
punch or old Philips head screw driver
Here the hardware you'll need to get:
#10 threaded rod
1/2" x 1/8" thick x 1 ft bar
2 nylon #10 fine thread nuts
2 nylon #10 coarse thread nuts
2 rubber gaskets
2 #10 wing nuts
1 brass #10 fine thread nut
4 nylon #10 washers (get 2 really small ones if they have it)
Let's head to page two and Eric will tell us exactly what we need to do and show us some killer pics of it during the assembly.
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