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SystemCooling.com has posted an article on the Pentium 4 Northwood.



Since I bought the 1.6, the heatspreader that Intel put on it has been giving me dirty looks and just begging to be removed. If I succeeded, it was one less piece of material in between my waterblock and the core itself. I was curious to see how much of an improvement I would see over the previous maximum, if any. Saturday night I broke out the dremel.

I started at the airhole and slowly worked my way down each side. After I began dremeling it became apparent how well the heatspreader works. It turns out it was mostly copper. To keep the pins from getting bent, I just kept them inside the included pink OEM packaging. I wore gloves and held the sides of the chip while I grinded away to keep from getting burnt. When it got too hot, a heatsink went on it to cool it down faster (hey it worked!)
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