Internals II
After completely removing the cooler and associated cables we see the picture below.
Note the four mounting holes around the socket ?. This is how the cooler attaches on to your AMD processor. I've got relatively small hands and found it a little restricted for my liking - especially when you're mounting a cooler on to a core as fragile as an Athlon's.
Speaking of the cooler, here is how it works. The heatsink is attached on to the processor via the use of the four screws shown above. You simply screw them in to the appropriate holes. The springs ensure that you cannot over-tighten and cause irreparable damage. It's all a little fiddly, and I was a little nervous about putting my XP2400 under the cooler.
Using the same heatpipe technology employed on certain Coolermaster coolers in particular, it does a reasonable job in cooling the CPU. Rather unconventionally, the actual cooling doesn't take place on the part of the heatsink that is in contact with the CPU. Rather, a 3750rpm Sunon fan is mounted on the radiator-style upper area (not pictured). If the BIOS' temperature reading are to be believed, the cooler does a fine job.
With so many useful features a couple of ICs are needed. Realtek's ubiquitous RTL8100B provides the 10/100 LAN duties and VIA's very own VT6306 gives us Firewire support. Shuttle have laid out the internals well. There's even a second fan header available. The ALC650 6-channel CODEC is used to provide the sound.
My XP2400 ready for action. The shim is pre-supplied with the package. I was a little surprised and worried when the XPC refused to boot properly with the shim and cooler in place. It doesn't help if you put the shim in the wrong way round :D. Turning the shim around saved an XP2400 CPU from an early death. You simply put it together in the same way you took it apart. It's quite easy to go from start to finish, component-wise, in 20 minutes.
