Illustrative Guide: Modify your Scythe Infinity mounting system...

[deees]

Here is my latest, and hopefully last installment in the never end quest for Infinity attachment. I purchased the EK CPU mounting kit from Petra’s site primarily for the heavy springs and the 4mm screws and thumbnuts.

The kit worked well, but the strain of the Scythe mounting clips was starting to make me worry.


I started to look into recreating them in extruded aluminum, (basically adapting the dimensions for increased material thickness). This is a far as I got:



After test fitting, I discovered that it wasn’t viable as a replacement because there is too much junk crowding around the socket, (at least on the AW9D).

A similar clip made by lad:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...25&postcount=4
…avoiding this problem by moving the horizontal tabs higher above the motherboard.

Unfortunately for me, that wouldn’t leave me enough room under the cooling vanes to install the springs and thumbscrews.

The solution was to move the thumbscrews to under the motherboard. Since I would no longer have access to the screw head because of the cooling vanes, I had to come up with a way to stop them from turning.

Using some 3mm thick aluminum stock, I made braces to link the two screws head so they can’t turn. The 4mm holes are threaded and the screw heads have small notches filed in them to allow a #2 set screw lock them into position. Thread lock would probably work as well.



Here are the pieces assembled to test the fit. The thumbscrews are installed above the back plate to hold anything together. The black spots on the screw heads are the hand-made setscrews.



A close-up on a test subject showing the screwhead:


Once it is assembled on the HSF, lock nuts were used to “preload” the springs so that some of the slack is removed before installation. It also has the effect making the unit more rigid.



The back plate was insulated with some green sheet plastic I cut to cover all of the contact area. I’d like to replace the stamped metal back plate with a solid metal one if I can find one. Meanwhile, I’ll need to use plastic spacers to expose more the thumbscrews, so I can get a hold of them.



One unexpected benefit of the design is that I can now tight two opposing corners at one time, and don’t have to deal with the problem of the heat sink “rocking” back and force.

A side and corner view showing the attachment to the extruded aluminum part of HSF, using #6 threaded stock and locknuts.





The basic dimensions of the bracket


and the brace