CPU Coasters

From Fozzee.net

I had a bunch of Pentium-class CPUs laying around, and figured that they had good thermal properties and would make good coasters. Below are the results:

My first attempt was the coaster in the lower middle position. It was assembled using a piece of duct tape to hold the CPUs together from the front, and a ring of black tape around the edge, and pouring it full of RVT Silicone. The silicone was pressed flat with a piece of waxed paper. This worked really well, but the RVT isnt quite as tear-resistant as it could be, as once the duct tape was removed, the CPUs tended to "flop" apart.

The second iteration was the AMD-based CPUs (With the metal heat spreaders) seen at the top right of the image. These were assembled using hot-glue instead of RVT, and, instead of backing the whole coaster, I just glued the pins on the adjacent edges. These were an improvement over the RVT style for a number of reasons: AMD Rules :) and Less flexing, since the hot-glue cools to be mostly solid. Additionally, hot-glue is a TON cheaper than RVT, and mostly self-leveling. The downside is that hot-glue tends to shrink, so these two coasters are "cupped" a bit, with the top side being "longer" than the pin side.

This cupping problem was rectified in the MK III model, with the inclusion of green felt backing. The backing provided a flat surface and allowed me to anchor the CPUs "to" it, rather than to each other. This resulted in a much stronger, flatter coaster than either of the previous designs.

Unfortunately, at some point, I think these coasters were discarded. This is a fairly old project, and once I got married and got "style" and whatnot, a stack of CPUs on the coffee / kitchen table was no longer all that desirable. If I was so inclined, this would not be hard to recreate.