N64 heat sinks

[omegabullit]

I jus ripped apart my N64, and I got the heatshields off. The heatsinks that are on all the chips, do I NEED to replace them, or are they fine the way they are? Thanks.

[gannon]

Most people replace them. I used an old ps2 heatsink on mine.

[omegabullit]

Will it hurt just to leave them?

[stereth]

Nintendo wouldn't have put them on there if they didn't do anything. Run the system for a while and see how hot they get. If you really want to leave them off, you'll probably need an alternative cooling solution, like a small heatsink and fan or something.

[omegabullit]

Well, its been running for like, 6 hours now, and the middle top chip is hot to the touch, so Ill jus have to remember that when designing the layout so I do melt the case

[SpongeBuell]

are you actually playing a game? If you aren't, you'll use more power and the chips will get much hotter.

[omegabullit]

Its just sittin running Ocarina of Time.

[gLItCH]

I think you should replace them just to be safe, my friend and I used pentium 133mhz 3/4" heat sinks taken from... well you can probably guess that. What we uesed to cut them: hacksaw, wd40, clamp, unbelieveable amount of energy, but they came out good.( not recomended to be repeated ) Radio shack sells the same size heat sinks for $.89

[Triton]

I used 3 small intel graphics chip heatsinks from i think like some old pc's at my school (yes i had permission to cannabalize them ) they work pretty good too, warm to the touch but not bad

[Gamelver]

I'd suggest adding some heatsink because the ones on the chips are good enough. The N64 comes with a big heatsink that's bigger than the N64 board, but it's too big to use in a portable.

Edit: I meant to say that the ones on the chips aren't good enough. My mistake