Submitted by: Simon via Submit a Kludge!
Favorite Comment: Fixer dono1 says, “If they were to add five more pennies they’d increase their heat transfer by a quarter.”
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i don’t understand what this is.
That right there is a video card, probably manufactured by Sapphire Graphics Cards.
The pennies are stuck in the heat sync, I’m assuming to improve the heat transfer.
No, that’s not actually a video card. It’s some sort of add-in card(It’s hard to tell which from this angle), but it’s too small to be a video card, not to mention that video cards don’t have ribbon cables attached to them.
I can see how this might seem to be a Kludge to those of you who aren’t computer hardware experts like I am, but I’m here to tell you it’s actually a fail.
The idea here was (apparently) to improve the heat sink by adding copper to it. That would be nice if the pennies were actualy made of copper. However, US pennies are made with a 97.5% zinc core, and there’s only 2.5% copper in them. (and it’s just in the outer coating.) So, really, he hasn’t added copper to his heatsink, he’s added zinc. Zinc happens to be one of the worst metals to use in a heatsink. Compare zinc’s thermal conductivity (116 W/M) to copper’s thermal conductivity of (401 W/M) and I think you get the picture: He was better off just using the aluminum fins he already had. At least then he wouldn’t be blocking the air flow with a bunch of worthless zinc!
Your right, its a completely useless mod. Also, notice how good heat sinks have a lot of surface area, it lets the heat dissipate faster. This is actually reducing the surface area.
Also those are not pennies.
Yes they are. I have a jar full of them on my shelf that I bag up once every couple of months and take to the bank. In fact, the one penny coin has looked like that for over 20 years.
ive never seen a penny like that and my friend collects old money and all that crap.
Indeed, it makes sense for the UK to call them that, because we actually call our coins that have a value 1/100 of a pound sterling a ‘pennie’ and one with 1/50 value of a pound 2 pence, whereas Americans have their denominations of dollars in cents, so have in fact stolen the phrase off us!
I think those are forgen coins. not sure how much theyre worth…
Er I can assure you those are British pennies
It’s UK pennys. Not all countrys use the same currency
wow sarge… with all your attempt to sound smart – you sure aren’t.
that absolutely IS a video card – its a low profile vidcard. you can see the back end of the DVI connection on the right hand side of the photo, and the cable coming off the top is the D-SUB connector, to another low profile bracket.
These types of vidcards are very common in HTPCs which are based around small cases (in which a full height vidcard wouldn’t fit)
So your entire first paragraph is wrong and your second paragraph is a self congratulatory fail.
Kindly STFU and stop spreading misinformation.
someone had to tell him
The fact he didn’t recognize that it was a low end video card doesn’t negate the validity of everything else he said. I’d hate to see others trying this because they didn’t read sarge’s post and then ruining their vid card.
Actually, it is a videocard, it’s a low form factor one, with a taller faceplate, so it has 2 outputs, the ribbon goes to the upper one. That white thing is a standard dvi connector.
Looks like a video card to me – http://us.sapphiretech.com/gm/images/product/gallery/0208/208_20090418_1723.jpg
Actually those are UK pennies mate, think the composition is roughly the same though so its still a fail either way.
Also it looks like a GPU to me, i can see the start of a PCI pin set on the left hand side, also thats definitely a DVI connector at the front although i couldn’t tell you what the ribbon cable is for
They’re actually British pennies which are copper-plated steel, but that doesn’t change your argument considering its conductivity is worse than even zinc.
It’s a capture card, the white thing at the top right is the DVI port. Also American pennies made from 1909-1982 are around 95% copper.
Clayton is correct. This card is a low-profile PCI-express card. The beige-ish block is the back of a DVI port, and the ribbon cable leads to a VGA (D-Sub) port.
It is, however, a crappy kludge. Maybe the owner put them here because toll booths don’t take pennies?
Correct, I have a card just like that one. Very similar heatsink, and as Cayton said, it’s also made by Sapphire.
Look Again,
the pennies being used are not American, but are U.K. 1p coins, and I’ve seen them (and 2p pieces) being used as heatsinks in equipment before, though I will admit If I was thinking about using them as any form of additional heatsink finnery nowadays, I’d run a magnet over them first and discard any that stick.
Any pennies (we call them that as well in the U.K.) produced pre ’92 were made of a bronze alloy (don’t know the relative copper/tin/etc composition), those made post ’92 are steel with a thin copper coating..really cheap and feel nasty.
At one point, the pre ’92 coins were worth more than their face value as scrap due to their copper content..don’t know if this is still the case, don’t track copper prices.
of course we call them pennies, our currency is pounds and pence, pence=penny the american slang for calling 1 cent peices pennies comes from the uk. like all of your decent culture.
We have decent culture?
Apple pie and fried chicken.
What’s culture?
Something that’s in a yogurt.
I thought those were strawberries?
No its what gives it that funny after taste.
You may be a computer expert for the top recent technologies, but I have an old graphics card that has a P-ATA connector, or ribbon cables, as you call them, Mr. Expert. It is indeed manufactures Sapphire, as Cayton wrote.
If only they were US pennies, your theory would be good.
However, they are British pennies (1 pence), most likely made before 1992. They are made of Bronze (97% copper, 2.5% zinc, 0.5% tin), making them perfect for the job. You should search a bit more before posting such a big thesis, because it is a fail for you, not for the card owner.
This is a nice kludge.
You may see those ribbon cables of video cards of any vintage if they have two outputs and the circuit board doesn’t reach the full height of the slot plate Designing them low means being able to fit them in a low-profile case with just a change of slot plate (so, potentially more sales for the same part) and probably also less circuit board material used. But it’s not a PATA connector; those are 40 pins, a VGA port is just 14.
And a nice kludge it is not, because the kludger just ruined the thermal transfer rate of that heatsink.
My video card has a P-ATA connector, but it is custom made (a kludge in itself), so I can’t tell if a retail card would have that.
And it sure improved the thermal transfer rate since they are British pence most likely made of 97% copper, making them perfect for heat transfer.
Also, the airflow is most likely flowing towards the back of the case, following the “valleys” in the heat sink, therefore not blocking the airflow but instead extending the surface area of the heat sink.
This kludge is genius, if it doesn’t block other cards.
Oh, OK, yours has a PATA connector (I think I have such a combo card too somewhere, video/SCSI/network), but the one in the picture is for a second VGA port.
Disagree about the heat transfer benefit, though. As said elsewhere too, there’s not much contact area between the coins and the heatsink itself, and thus a large thermal resistance between the heat source and the surface of the coins. The area of the original heatsink in direct contact with air is reduced (there’s bugger-all airflow in the crevices between the heatsink and the coins), so I very much doubt it’s even close to neutral.
Those are English pennies, not American. Whereas you are correct in stating that American pennies are 97.5% zinc (as long as they were manufactured before 1982), UK pennies are made with a bronze alloy (before 1992).
First, indeed the American pennies are made from mostly Zinc, (not looking at the fact they are UK coins) but if they used 1950 and previous pennies, they would be solid copper, thus giving the full advantage of the idea.
Make it pre-1982 for US pennies being nearly pure copper.
Why didn’t my 1943 pennies work? (just messin’ with you)
Well-played, sir. I might have to steel that line sometime.
1950? I always thought the change was all in 1982. Maybe it was done in steps. I remember in chemistry class we sorted out post-1982 pennies from a pile, nicked them, put them in some chemical to dissolve the zinc, and ended up with what was basically copper foil. I’d already known that pennies had a zinc core, but I hadn’t expected them to have this much; they were pretty much just zinc coins with a copper plating.
That chemical would be hydrochloric acid.
Oh, okay. After ten years you can lose track of that kind of detail if you never use it. Isn’t that also stomach acid, or am I getting that mixed up with some’m else?
Yes – but likely more highly concentrated for the sake of his chemistry class (though not necessarily) and without additional enzymes that help break down food.
Just don’t mix it up with Pepto-Bismol.
i think that 1974 is the magic year for copper pennies.
You might be right- my money has been disappearing ever since.
1983 is the magic year. After that you have zinc core. And you can do the vanishing penny trick with Coka Cola.
Actually they changed the metal content from a 95% copper/remainder tin/zinc alloy to the current 97.5% zinc/2.5% copper electro-plated type in 1982. So if these were US pennies, using any made in 1981 or earlier would be ok. There was some overlap in production in 1982, and the only way to sort them is with a scale that reads in 0.1 grams, which isn’t worth the effort.
Those are English pennies, not American. Only reason I’m certain is I bought a job lot a few years ago for my wifes Belly Dance Costume. They are solid copper (at least the ones I have are) and make a real nice jingle.
That card may be an SCSI card. I’ve an SCSI card in my junk box that looks a lot like that, but not exactly.
You used English pennies on your wife’s belly dance costume? That’s what I’d call a waist of money.
If nobody paid tribute to that hilarious remark, I’ll just have to do it myself: amidst all this heated texpex-debate, this cool pun really made my day!
Ahaha! I’m still shaking my head (which does not jingle when I shake it) over how that debate ends with belly dancing…
Ooh, spoke too soon…
For a “computer hardware expert”, I’m giving you a FAIL for not being able to recognize a LOW PROFILE graphics card.
And… the pennies are just stuck in. They would need to have some heat sink compound to give them any benefit at all. In the end, blocking the air flow between the fins probably makes the entire thing way counter productive.
On the other hand – as I’m guessing sarge has – I HAVE used old solid copper pennies soldered on to DIP amplifiers to act as somewhat of a heat sink.
I don’t remember the change over date from copper to zinc. A file quickly tells you the answer. Oh, and if the thermal conductivity of zinc wasn’t the only bad part, you can’t solder the zinc puppies to anything…
Your claimed PC expertise (“As a professional computer repair technician”), damaged already from the wood screws episode, has now gone totally through the floor. This *IS* a video card, a half-height PCI-e x16 card. That’s a DVI connector at right; the ribbon cable probably leads to a second connector fitted to the shield.
Now go away before I taunt you a second time.
Oh, and BTW, thermal conductivity is Watts-Kelvin-meter per square meter, which reduces to W.K/m . You lost the Kelvin, and meter is lower case.
No it’s not. It’s Watts per metre Kelvin (W/mK)
You’re right, I should have looked it up instead of relying on my memory (perhaps it needs a heat sink too).
As a computer expert, I can tell you that while your second paragraph would be true if those were American pennies, the first one is a certain fail. That is most certainly a graphics card. Look at the back of the card.
Some of the older ones had ribbon cables for various reasons. The first cards designed to be able to provide multi-monitor capability used ribbons. Some of the modern ones still do – though, their ribbons are usually a lot smaller than the old ones.
You do sound like an expert, but you also sound fresh out of expert-school as you do not recognize technology that is only a generation and a half old. I cut my teeth on early ’80s tech.
I still think of the pictured Saphire as “new”. I remember when their company was founded even. Hell, I remember when ATI was founded. Same year that their current parent company reached the Fortune 500.
And actually, part of your comment is a fail as well. Seeing as you were talking about US pennies, but the pennies seen in those pictures are clearly not US.
Those aren’t American pennies, “expert.”
Yes, it is a video card….It has a DVI port on it…
They aren’t US pennies strangely enough.
Look closely. these are Arabic coins, made of pure copper. (i used to live overseas) now, what’s your thought?
I’d like to add some more salt to this wound.
If you work inside computers as an occupation, please tell me who for, so that I can try and get you fired for gross incompetence immediately.
As someone who has actually assembled her own computers over the years, I find the fact that you are proud of your blind idiocy downright offensive.
What’s next? You’re going to try and tell me that I need to open the covers on my hard drives and clean the platters regularly?
Previous comment @ Sarge, btw.
Actually, it is a video card. Its a half height card and the ribbon cable is there for the regular 15 pin DSUB connection to older VGA monitors and is a ribbon cable so you can remove it and replace the backplate with a half height one to fit in smaller form factor machines. The white connector on the back is DVI. It was a good effort on trying to sound smart though.
get over yourself, my friend.
Pennies made in 1982 and before are 100% copper.
Pennies: $0.20
Low end video card: $50
Overclocking the GPU to get that one extra FPS: Priceless
Oh look everyone, it’s the old “priceless” joke again. Wow, laughing so hard.^
It looks like the inside of a parking meter from Penny Lane.
Hm. I could have sworn that was from Abbey Road.
I believe you meant to say a Watts-Kelvin-meter (right, Stoneshop?)
I dono watt you mean by that remark.
It is a high-tech piggy bank, especially meant to store money earmarked for buying a faster video card for one’s computer.
It’s a penny tray.
I wonder how many other people misread the title…
@Alleykitten:
Looks like a heat dispenser (or change dispenser…)
Then it might just work!
I just put a fan on mine…
Why bother to buy expensive aftermarket copper heatsinks when the loose change lying around in your filthy couch will work just as well?
This kludge really makes a lot of cents.
(about twenty)
Oh, SNAP!
crackle?
Pop!
By the time you hear “Pop!” evacuate the building and call the fire department.
When your GPU goes pop .. bad news.
When your motherboard goes pop? Worse news.
And when you’re mom goes Pop…? Hahahahaa
I lol’d
Since they are UK pennies, they are worth about 30 of your cents.
Actually, it makes 20 pence, as it has been established that they are British
1 p. coins. (Just putting in MY 2 cents… er… pence)
Those aren’t pennies. at least, not american pennies.
not that it matters or anyone cares.
They are UK Pennies (ie 1 p coins)
Someone has used pennies to enhance their heatsink on an old graphics card.
It’s the new Cent-tral Processing Unit.
They’re BRITISH pennies. The best kind of pennies.
Aye sir!
Better to be penny wise than pound foolish.
If you’re pounding with your bare fist, that’s foolish, yes, but you have to agree that you have to make those pennies stick. You don’t want loose change around the inside of your computer.
I dont agree about the british penis.
“The English, the English, the English are best,
I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest!”
One thing is for sure…this picture will elicit a lot of pensive stares.
Oof…………………..
Pensive stares??? Isn’t that what Harry Potter and Dumbledore did in his office??????
No, that was molestation.
Now that’s funny!
The kludge used British coins. I submitted what was supposed to be a thoughtful play on words for my initial comment. But I guess this is what I get for offering my tuppence.
Understood completely (Hence the “oof…”) That’s what I get for putting my two cents worth in.
Sorry ‘boot that – I’ll try to change………..
This was such a polite ex-change, I figured it must be Canadian. I knew for sure it wasn’t American.
Yes. It would appear we both went to considerable ex-pense to keep things from heating up over my misunderstanding of timbenzidrene’s initial reply. To use a phrase coined by Shakespeare, if I may, all’s well that ends well.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads … and so on
Incorrectamundo dear kc/cc – I am an Americoin – sometimes prone to change, and given at times to non-cents, but I try very hard to mind my P’s & Q’s (pennies and quarters)
That accent is perhaps from somewhere in New England, and yet, I have since learned how veddy British all of this ex-change has been.
Actually, minding ones P’s & Q’s refers to Pints and Quarts… Its how the British serve beer in pubs.
If it was Canadian, it would have been an eh-xchange.
Eh! Cheque, please!
What no one realizes is the ribbon cable on the left is actually duct tape.
no it is not duct tape…
Duh……..I believe the motif here is “kludge” , hence the attempt (feeble tho it may have been) at surmising the user going on the cheap with his ribbon. Congrats sir – you have an uncanny grasp of the OBVIOUS. (and you added a link as well???? GAL)
it is an IDE cable: http://www.vgmusic.com/faq/gallery/plugs/p-IDE.jpg
What no one notices is that timbenzidrene is a dyslexic. The ribbon cable is on the right.
Dang! Sorry about the brain fart.
No, wait!! I just remembered – I meant STAGE left!
(Time to up the meds)
So…is that ribbon cable on my left or your left?
no! the third one
“I don’t know.”
“Third base!”
How’d I get back on third base? Look all I wanted to know is what’s the name of the player on first base?
There is only one said “Ribbon Cable” and that is on the right side. The material on the left side of the card has not been addressed.
It’s on the right, and it’s a ribbon cable. Duct tape doesn’t look quite like that.
It’s a kludge, so duct tape must be involved. Sure, it may look like ribbon cable, but make no misteak, it can only be duct tape.
Nicely kludged heat sink…
This looks like a graphics card (it builds the image that is shown on your pc sreen) , for those who don’t understand it. The ridges on there are cooling ridges. The pennies are there to conduct heat, Although the cooling ridges are enough. And when the card is built into a pc, it will be upside down, so the pennies will fall out. Kinda lame actually.
Suuure. All PCs are tower cases; desktop cases don’t exist, nor do tower cases with the mainboard on the opposite side.
Any more inane generalisations?
Ha ha! Classic. Having studied Mech. Eng., this is a pretty lame implementation of what the kludgemeister had intended. Fist, pennies are not (usually) even near 100% pure copper. Next, the actual contact area between the aluminum fins and the pennies is actually really really small (no polished surfaces, no thermal paste), and therefore won’t transfer a lot of heat. glue a fan on top of that bad boy (remove pennies first) and you’ll get some real heat transfer going on.
And it took you studying Mechanical Engineering to figure this out? LOL
If they were to add five more pennies they’d increase their heat transfer by a quarter.
Except that they are British pennies, so, unless the exchange rate has varied recently, no on both counts.
Exchange rate has nothing to do with it. The pound is subdivided into 100 pence, the singular of which is “penny.” Therefore 25 pennies = one quarter of a GBP.
I accept your apology.
Except that 25 pence is never, has never been, and never (if I have anything to do with it) will be, called `a quarter’.
Ah, twenty-five pence in quantity, I hereby dub thee, “The Quarter-Pounder.”
Dear “Quarter-Hater” Smithers-
You may be a whiz at numismatics, but we’re talking mathematics here, so put down your tea and biscuits and listen up because I’m only going to say it once:
25 out of 100 of anything (be it pence, pants, pizza, or whatever) is, always has been, and always will be, a QUARTER (1/4) of the total.
I accept your apology.
“I sink, therefore I RAM”
Penny’ll start a fire . . . 20 an inferno! Cheap bastards!
Even if these coins are effective conductors, he’s losing as much surface area as he’s gaining, since each coin is touching two fins. They may be sticking up a little more than halfway, so there may be a small net gain in surface area, but not much.
What a fail. Pennies (or UK 1p coins in this pic) are coated with copper but mostly nickel which makes them transfer the heat between the fins on the heatsink ruining its ability the dissipate the heat as well ad making the airflow which does the same thing useless. This card is just asking to overheat.
LET’S EFFIN’ OVERCLOCK THAT THING…
poof goes the GPU
I don’t know about poof…
…a little camp, perhaps.
melting down the economy
That PCI express card was ready for change…
putting more metal will create a better “buffer” for heat, also increasing surface area will increase transfer of heat to air, i dont care what kind of metal it is,
those thermal ratings are all RELATIVE
Maybe the card is dead and they’re using it for a coin holder? Even if it is to be used, they’d be a fool to think that the coins will help with heat transfer, much less what I shudder to think they’d use to affix them to the heat sink with. Simply bending the fins together won’t hold them very well. A small fan, affixed using screws, would do, and hold, better.
Penny for your thoughts, Anna?
A penny saved is a penny burned.
By adding pennies to this computer card, i can finally show those jerks at Geek Squad what for! or watch the computer explode. either one works.
Seems like a 3dfx Voodoo card with a floppy (SLI) cable on it
This recession have to end soon. People are loosing their minds. What we see here is someone trying to brood some pennies in hope for’em to hatch into new ones.
I know people lost their trust in banks, but there are other ways to keep your money safe…
it don’t matter what they’re made of… it increases effective surface area of the heatsink
Which doesn’t make any cents or even work if the thermal conductivity sucks.
Oh yes it does. The efficiency of a heatsink depends on its surface area and structure, airflow, *AND* the capability of the heatsink to get those Watts from the core to the surface. That last bit is why they’re all made of aluminium or copper (or both), and not of the much cheaper iron.
If you’re covering part of the heat exchange area with some metal that has a lower thermal conductivity, or obstructing airflow, the heat transfer to the surrounding air drops. And even if you’re covering the heatsink with a material that has *better* thermal conductivity, you need to have good thermal contact between both materials, otherwise you’ll still have a large drop in efficiency; that’s why you need thermal paste between a CPU or GPU and its heatsink.
I disagree. I think Stan is right. Any material would work. In fact, I think Stan should set up a demonstration of the point by wrapping his GPU in several layers of polar-fleece, disconnect all system fans, run the latest, most graphics intense program he can find, film it and post the results on YouTube.
That would set you straight.
…thats…erm… priceless?
Considering that the coins pictured do not match the pennies in circulation today, I’m guessing they must be very old. Pennies today are no longer made of pure copper, as they were when they were first introduced. As such, modern pennies don’t conduct as effectively as older coins. I must admit, this is a pretty innovative use of currency, though I have to wonder how difficult it was to procure those.
Reading the preceding entries must be hard.
Reading is easy. Comprehension is hard.
Very old as in the 1970s?
Those are new pennies (post 1971). The old penny’s were 240 in the pound and you could set your watch by them!
They match perfectly the pennies circulating today! Why I have five just like them in my pocket right now. I have 3 with a new design from 2009 as well, but the coins with that design are still just as good as when they were introduced in 1971. Of course, they may not match any `pennies’ circulating in your country…
Kinda pointless…I don’t see any thermal grease.
He should think twice before he sinks any more money into this project.
To clear up the mystery…. ATI Radeon HD 4350 Low profile graphics card with English Pennies. Seems to defy physics – works great… could always be better. Love the debate
Those are NOT pennies! They’re not even U.S. coins.
British coins are pennies too. In fact, they were the original penny. Might wanna look outside your own borders sometime
Those aren’t even pennies, look closer!!
Either this is humour, or you need to read the previous thread. It’s been mentioned about half a dozen times already that these are British pennies.
Sarge did some epic research.
Look on the brite side ….. he found a new thing to do with those pennies you find im batween the sofa.
look on the good side… now is a more expensive video card!
This is a prime example of climate change.
Maybe he’s using the card as a penny holder rather than using the penny’s to mod the heat sink.
I wonder how much of an overclock you could do with that?
Sarge i am calling you out. You might be a computer “Expert” but please check your facts or even go for a spin on google before you post about what is or isn’t a GPU. I don’t even need to be MCIPT certified to know the truth in this. This is indeed a low-end Hi-Def Video Card. The Zinc info is spot on though. The person who kludged this is fail. Cheers.
Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102821
Umm not pennies, pence I think.
Each one of those coins is a one-penny coin (singular of pence).
W E I R D
any other uses other than that or currency?
they are english pennies – mostly copper