Best way to cut an alluminum heatsink?

[DR]

Help?

[mr_anderson187]

alluminiam heatsink for what praytell? GPU, CPU? level of cut your after Could be hard depending on how the fins are arranged actually if the fins are square edge they could be clamped and/or hacksawed/smoothed,

post + £0.02p

[DR]

Its a CPU HSF but very small - needs the top 5cm cut off.

Hack saw - ack no :|

[mr_anderson187]

Jigsaw then

depends really how slim the fins are, too much movement and you maybe coudl bend them out of shape, alternatively, get a small board of wood, roughly measure out hwo far it is between each fin, sand you wood down to act as a packer in between the fisn so they dont bent, mark then cut each fin (yes - with a hacksaw [but slowly]) one by one, should get a clean cut, and not ruin the performance off the sink

maybe

[DR]

Thing is - I started to dremel and it worked well - then I lost the disc and have none spare.

Who sells them on the high st

[mr_anderson187]

dremel eh, the mascot of bit tech? lol

there are a lot of 'dremel copycats' out there, B&Q, do dremel brand products and their own brand, and the last time i was there had replacement cutting/grinding discs. nothing more than £4 roughly it was for a replacement dremel one.

failing that, ship the jigsaw out

[DR]

I have a Draper version of the Dremel.

Thing is -all I want is this damn media centre to be quieter....

[Gordy]

B&Q do dremmel disc. Or cheaper is hobbycraft but you may not have one near you. (they are next to each other in bris )

The dremmel or a hand file is probably the best tool for the job.

[Lee H]

David.

Not have a metal engineers close by you could ring and ask if they could lob the 5mm off the HSF for you ?

[DR]

I have Intel - they will do.

I will call them up

[Gordy]

What heatsink btw and why does it need to be shortened?

[Lee H]

IIRC its for his pentium M for his media system and the HSF is too high ( by 5mm... )

[Gordy]

Get a thinner fan? Or is it already a smaller one?

[DR]

Good guess

its basically a heatsink from my DFI board - the fan sits right next to the grill and makes a huge noise.

So - cut the sink - try the fan, if it doesn't cool enough, take the fan off and put on this 15mm thick fan (which is 5mm thicker than the other one - but slow it right down (since it has a thermal diode on it)

[nev_payne]

Sorry - so which dimension are we cutting here - the height of the fins or the length/width of the block?

EDIT - I should read the finer lines. Err you could try sanding or filing? 5mm is dead easy to remove with a bit of manual labour. Could always a dremel, but may take a while - would recomend 1 fin at a time to keep the risk of the cutter shattering down. Then you can always smooth the edges down.

[Gordy]

What sized fan?

Remove the grill?