A hot 939 is about as welcome as a hot 940. I am of course talking about AMD CPUs.

The problem with the AMD 939 is that the stock cooler is not as efficient as it could be, and because 939s only saw a year of production, there are not too many around, and not too many better cooling solutions either. The good news is that a stock AMD 2 or 3 heatsink can be used.

There is a slight issue with accommodating the heat pipes of an AMD 2 or 3 heatsink, but it is easy enough to shave away part of the 939 heatsink mounting to make way for the pipes. It goes without saying that you should remove the mounting plate BEFORE making any changes.

One more change possibly.

My Biostar board has a capacitor right up against the side of the CPU fan header, and it just happens to be on the side of the header that prevents slipping a 4 pin cable over the the three pins. The way out of this minor niggle is to use an extension cable exactly like this one..

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/00197.html

The end result is a CPU cooler which easily outperforms the stock AMD 939 offering, and peace of mind that the CPU is not burning itself to a ‘well done’ state.

The machine in question now idles at around 31°C, peaking at 44°C, but dropping back very quickly. This is in stark contrast to the 40°C idle temperature before the change.

I just checked it, and it is at 33°C with Firefox running 5 tabs and using 8% of the CPU. This is something I have NEVER seen with IE9. A black mark against Firefox. for sure..