cyberstormppc-cooling.jpg

CyberVisionPPC and CyberStormPPC runs very hot so back in 2007 I decided to come up with a cooling solution of the cards. I have already made a post about the CyberVisionPPC modifications here on Vintage Amiga Hardware Blog so let’s focus on the CyberStormPPC instead.

Cooling the CyberStorm card is a lot trickier. First there are four holes in the board for securing a cooling device, though the holes are set up very close to each other so fitting a heatsink can be difficult. More problems is the height of the cooler, if the card is going to be run in a A4000 desktop case you only have 36 mm vertical space if you want to run a CD/DVD-ROM.

The original heatsink and fan on the CyberStormPPC card is only 1 cm in height and the fan is only running at 5 volt. I decided to mount a golden Zalman heatsink intended for chipsets on PC motherboards. This heatsink fits under the CD/DVD-ROM but I wanted to run a fan too so I had to chop about 1 cm off the heatsink with a dremel tool.

While removing the original heatsink I noticed that there was no thermal paste applied to the processor which might explain why the card got so hot. I applied a thin layer of Arctic Silver thermal compound before attaching the cut down Zalman heatsink. Thanks to the way the heatsink was designed it can fit a lot of different setups so the awkward setup of the holes on the circuit board was not any problem. I did have to come up with another way of securing it to the CyberStomPPC though since the original plastic plugs where far to short. I replaced them with a screw, spring and a couple of small bolts.

Since there is no way of telling how hot the CPU is running I can only guess how much cooler it is running now. I touched the side of the heatsink and it does get very hot, but not so hot that you can not touch it which might be positive.
There are some parts of the card where the cooling could be more improved. There are some chips under the memory sticks which would benefit of tiny heatsinks. It is very important to cool them if you overclock your CyberStorm card, since I am not overclocking I am going to let them run as is until I find some suitable miniature heatsinks. I am also going to find a smaller heatsink for the 060 and a tall mini heatsink for the voltage regulator besides the PPC chip.

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