Unlocking Silver Epoxy For AMD CPU's

Company: CrazyPC
Product: Unlocking Silver Epoxy
CrazyPC Price: $9.99
Date Reviewed: April 7, 2001
Reviewed By: Jason

The Need For A Better Solution:

In the quest for overclocking an Athlon or Duron, the first step is to always "unlock" the CPU by reconnecting the L1 bridges. Most people (including myself) simply use a pencil to reconnect these bridges. The problem with using a pencil is that sometimes the connections can start to fail after a while and you have to take off your heat sink and re-pencil them again. Not a big deal, but a pain nonetheless. One early solution that I saw was some $24 "Trace Tape" (3 pieces of tape per packet) which looked nothing more to me than little strips of metal on a piece of tape. Then I thought to myself, "Self, why couldn't I just put a piece of  tape over the penciled L1 bridges?" And that's exactly what I did.

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Nothing fancy, just a normal little piece of scotch tape that I cut with some scissors to fit. I also used a pair of tweezers to hold the tape so I wouldn't get my fingerprints all over it. One thing that I was worried about was the tape possibly melting or something, but I ran it for a couple weeks before pulling it off and the tape was just fine, no sticky mess or anything. So there is an easy solution that literally costs pennies.

Yet Even A Better Solution:

CrazyPC offers something that I think is even a better solution than just a simple piece of tape. They sell an AMD Unlocking Silvery Epoxy kit, which only cost $9.99 and contains enough epoxy in one kit to unlock literally dozens of CPU's. Of course you can always use the epoxy for other things too like fixing broken PCB traces and such. The kit comes complete with everything you need except for a clothes pin to apply it with.

The following is included: Instruction Sheet 2 Epoxy syringes (parts A & B) Alcohol wipe Protective glove Application spreader Mixing stick

The instructions were very complete providing a step-by-step procedure. Basically the epoxy is mixed in equal parts, and you only need a small amount, I tried to use about a grain of rice size for each part, which turned out to be way more than enough. The plastic card that you mix the epoxy on  is about the size of a credit card, and the surface is very slick. After I was done, I simply took a paper towel and wiped the excess off the card and then it was perfectly clean for use later.

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