Slot 1 Orb Modification

Product: ThermalTake Slot 1 Orb & Slot 1 Celeron 300A
Street Price: ~$15 for the orb
Date Reviewed: January 12, 2001

Why This Was Done:

First of all, you should know this isn't a hardcore review of the latest hardware coming out on the market. I just wanted to share a little fun I had modding a Slot 1 Orb to fit my old Slot 1 Celeron 300A. Yes, I still use this CPU in one of my machines, not all of us can afford 1Ghz Athlons. The old cooler for the Celeron was a very poor design which didn't cool the CPU well, not to mention the fans were completely shot from old age. The max I could go with the old cooler was 450Mhz @ 2.1v, with the "Celeron Orb" on it now runs cool to the touch and I can run it at 482Mhz @ 2.2v. I had the Slot 1 Orb laying around collecting dust, and since I didn't want to spend any money buying a Celeron cooler for this ancient CPU, I decided I was going to make them work together. One rainy afternoon I was trapped in the apartment so I started gathering up all the components to make this little marvel.

How It Was Done:

The holes for a Celeron are more spread out than a Slot 1 P3, and the Celerons don't have a back-plate like the P3. To overcome the back-plate problem, I happened to have the extra kit from an Alpha P3125 that allows you to mount it to a Celeron. (Yeah, like I'm going to mount a $45 cooler on a $25 CPU.) I had to get some different screws, nuts, and washers, but I was able to dig those up in my box of miscellaneous things.

The problem with the holes being spaced out more was nothing that my Dremel and Makita (cordless drill) couldn't fix. First I cut off the old P3 alignment pins that were embedded in the orb, then I placed the Celeron on the orb to mark the new holes to be drilled, making sure it was all level and perpendicular.

I had to take a chunk out of the Orb near the top holes so the screws would fit through, easily done with the Dremel's cutting disc. The bottom holes had plenty of clearance though. However after I test fitted the Celeron with the orb, it wasn't making full contact to the core! Yes, I know I used way too much thermal compound, but I did that to test the contact between the core & orb.

Since the Orb was intended for a Coppermine P3 and not the massive core of a Celeron, only one thing could be done, and it involves sandpaper... Time to lap the orb flat!

This is after some sanding, you can see how high up the round area was compared to the rest of the middle section.

Almost there, this sucker was nowhere near flat to begin with....

I think that's about on the money. No need to go up to the 2,000+ grits, I think the highest I use is like 600-800. Now that we have a flat surface where the Celeron core sits, it's time to slap some more thermal compound on there and see if we get better contact than before all this hard work...

On To Page 2 To See How It Works...