The End of an Athlon

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 still they keep claiming that time heals all wounds... ;)

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.

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.

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.

The first time I built a PC, and the first time I mounted a heatsink, was to one of these bare die AMD CPUs. I heard about the fragility of these, and must have read the directions about ten times, and paused and checked each step about five times while doing it. It came out fine, but it was nerve wracking as hell.

Overclocking an Athlon XP 2500+ to a 3200+ was pretty cool. Easiest overclock ever.

Socket 370 and Socket A were very easy to break. You needed a flat head screwdriver to pry off the metal bracket which held the cooler in place. Apply a little too much force (or just repeat the process a few times) and watch the plastic nook break off of the socket, rendering the entire mainboard useless. Zip-ties or super glue might save you, if just for a while. But good luck moving/transporting the computer then.

DIP and PGA packages for the win!

This happened to me several times with Athlons in 2000, the die on these would break exceptionally easily such that it was a known issue at the time. You had to be quite careful.

I've got one sitting next to me that I'm in the process of rejuvenating. The north bridge has a small fan with integrated heatsink/boat that I'm searching for. The CPU fan is still okay. It's a pre-PCIe system, and has a VGA output (no DVI or HDMI).

The main reason I'm keeping it around is that it's got 5-1/4" & 3-1/2" floppy drives, and T1000 and DDR4 tape drives.

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...

Is it ever fixable assuming one had unlimited money and wants to fix instead of rebuy?

Poor CPU.

My last desktop multimedia PC was powered by Athlon XP.

Heat probably cracked it. I had a xp2000+ and even with a heavy copper heatsink and a 9000rpm delta fan, the thing still ran hot.

Why are chips still built in only a few layers?

Even modern silicon only has some 60 of them right?

Plus don't transformers work in layers, making it natural to put a bunch of layers on top of each other? Regarding cooling, couldn't there be liquid cooling through a plumbing network in the same die?

Our brain takes quite a large volume, and we want chips that have a similar level of parts count (achieved - 80 billion neurons) and interconnectedness (not yet, around 10k synapses per neuron). Why do it in 80 2D layers? Is there no way etch silicon in 3D?

We need those microscope guys to take some shots of this.