A Chunk of Silicon Fell Off This Athlon XP—and It Still Worked
The End of an Athlon
While swapping CPUs during research on undocumented CPUID bits, Michal Necasek pulled a heatsink off an Athlon XP and found a large piece of the processor's silicon stuck to it. The CPU had been running fine despite a hidden micro-crack, which gave way under the force of removal. The incident highlights the fragility of early flip-chip PGA packaging, which both AMD and Intel briefly used around 2000 before switching to lidded designs for better durability.
The CPU worked just fine until a good chunk of it came off.
- c0l0
Ouch, that poor die :(
I remember it well, back in the very early 2000s, when my own Athlon XP 1800+ (an AGOIA stepping, I do know that for sure :D) met its untimely end at the hands of a device that was designed to prevent the exact misfortune that killed its sister CPU as seen in this submission!
The fragile silicon was a problem the enthusiast/PC-builder community was very aware of, and the market responded with "spacer" kits you could buy for a few $$$ that were cut from solid sheets of thin copper. These spacers would carefully wrap around all the little bumps on the CPU's upper side, and provide a level plane for the heatsink to rest upon, while still establishing direct contact with the die that it was supposed to cool down. So there was, in theory, decidedly less of a chance of killing your CPU by having the heatsink meet it in an unfortunate angle, or something to that effect.
Unfortunately, the spacer that I had bought turned out to be just a wee little bit too thick, and, despite thermal paste (Arctic Silver!), the CPU did not in fact make contact with the heatsink (something shiny from Thermalright or Zalman, I think?) at all, which killed it instantly as soon as I powered up the rig for the first time. That's what it was like back in the days, when we got to school walking ten miles uphill (both ways) barefoot in deep snow.
I had to put in some overtime at the small PC shop I worked after school back then, to afford a measly Duron 800 as its replacement. And stil […]
- M95D
I learned (can't remember where) that I should try to rotate the cooler a little bit, with the mounting clamp still on, before undoing the clamp and removing it.
I still have a working Athlon XP / KT133A with ISA under my desk.
- jamesforestwest
Oh man, the nostalgia. I had an Athlon XP too, and I still remember that fear when installing the heatsink. One wrong move and you're basically screwed...
- Aurornis
Hardcore builders will remove the lid of their CPU to get the best possible thermal contact. The performance improvement is very small and not worth it but the bragging rights are fun. Unless you destroy the chip while delidding it, that is.
- Torkel
Is that actually the silicon that's on top of a cpu?
I've always assumed the silicon is super thin - "wafer" thin. And then some material is added where the bonding wires etc are embedded in and the pads or pins are attached to.
For sure it's like this on newer CPUs, where there is not a single piece of silicon bit rather multiple ones with interconnect between them.