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Geeksta Processor Belt Buckle

Geeksta Processor Belt Buckle
There`s been lots of progress lately relatively to the identity of geeks: more and more, we're affirming our dedication to the nerdy world in several ways, namely through how we dress, with those Thinkgeek t-shirts that mere mortals cannot understand but also by the way we decorate our rooms and homes, how we talk, and even what music we listen to.

Now I've had the idea for this Instructable while browsing around and falling on the e-shop of some kid my age who was selling PCB and electronic component jewelery: CMOS earrings, resistor pendants, and the like. Since then, I've been trying to integrate old hardware and electronic junk to my daily dressing, without much success. It wasn't until I stumbled on a pile of old processors that I finally clicked on what would be cool, and yet not be a total pain wearing: a processor belt buckle.

Although not useful in itself, this thing is nice showoff material for those times when you get together with your geeky homedawgs.

It's simple really: all we are gonna do is take a proc, brutalize it up a bit, then solder it to your standard issue slider and casing type buckle used with strap type belt.
 
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Step 1Materials

Materials
You don't need much stuff to complete this thing, and most of the things are either found in most geeky households, available for free with the right connections or available for real cheap. Without any further blabber, here is the list:

-Belt buckle with a flat face. This can be either be the ones that clasp or the ones with the tightening pin in them... excuse my lack of more precise wording. There are pictures available at the bottom.

-Processor, the older the better. I used two Socket 7 Intels of the code name P5 era. According to pictures I have seen, and the size of the heatsink in an old box I have, the K6 series should be big enough, so rejoice, AMD fanboys. In this Instructable, we will be using a P54C, a pretty high end chip for the time, which used to sport 200 mhz and MMX.

-Some acid flux paste. If you have a soldering iron, you probably already have this.

-Solder. I used 60/40, I am guessing that 50/50 would work too, but any lower will bust it in my opinion. I used full metal solder, but if you don't have any flux you might want to try resin core. I haven't tested that though.
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45 comments
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Jun 29, 2009. 1:25 PMgrampafish says:
I want to do this with a pentium 4 core 2 duo
Jul 1, 2011. 9:49 AMM4industries says:
You would waste that kind of money on a belt buckle?
Jan 22, 2012. 3:56 PMgrampafish says:
my comp teacher is throwing out old computers
Jan 22, 2012. 7:11 PMM4industries says:
Oh, okay. Post photos when you're done!
Dec 30, 2009. 12:59 PMhellstudios says:
ohhh my godddddddd
Jun 3, 2010. 2:12 PMsynthblade says:
OH MY GOD. I have about 4 old POS computers (all with very old hardware) that are about to be stripped of their CPU sockets.... LOL - Incredible idea. Brilliant!
Sep 24, 2007. 8:12 PMPunkguyta says:
Oh dear..., use a bloody amd boy~! Intel isn't something to be proudly wearing. -P
Sep 25, 2007. 3:18 AMgmjhowe says:
whats wrong with intel? i would do this with an intel q6600 just to make people cringe lol
Sep 25, 2007. 6:31 AMPunkguyta says:
Amd's are worthy ceramics? A 400mhz amd k6 would still have some use where as a 1ghz P3 is still useless to most.
Dec 30, 2009. 12:57 PMhellstudios says:
I'm all for hearing that AMD is better than intel, but this is just... WAYYY TOOO fanboy-ish..
May 14, 2009. 12:12 AMAussieJake44 says:
im running a gentoo web server on a 1ghz p3 so suck my bawlz
Jun 14, 2009. 5:18 PMPunkguyta says:
I'm running a media server/FTP backups from a 2.0 celeron, and it feels slower than my 2.0 amd sempron, and the sempron is actually overclocked from 1.5. There is a reason my amd has only a paltry 128kb of L2 cache on the processor die, whereas the celeron has like 2MB of L2 Cache, the celeron may be able to process more data at once, however the sempron is snappier and usually bottlenecks out at the hard disk.
Jul 1, 2009. 4:37 AMAussieJake44 says:
its funny because we are having the same old amd/intel debate. over outdated architecture. anyet i also own an am3+ system and happen to like both intel and amd. however youre point about the l2 caches is good. amd used to make much higher performance processors than intel however the new phenom 2's arent as good as the i7's and i find are beaten by mos of the core 2 duo's
Jul 1, 2009. 5:54 AMPunkguyta says:
I keep hearing that, that the new phenoms aren't any good, they however AMD did just release a new phenom designed for overclocking, however they've only managed 4.73ghz, which I suppose is impressive considering it's running 4 cores under there. I'm pretty sure italy has overclocked a plain old pentium 4 prescott to well over 5ghz, actually I think they beat their record and brought it up to almost 7ghz if I'm correct.

AMD architecture is a little out-dated, and the lack of SSE2 support pisses me off with my sempron because I'd like to try installing OSX on it, but not going to happen, that's sad that my thinkpad with it's 1.5ghz pentium D will run OSX and my 2.0 sempron will NOT.

But I will always stick with AMD until they prove otherwise, for a good example, I notice music skipping a lot LESS on my sempron when I've got the processor loaded up, unless it's reallllyyyy bogged down, otherwise It's treated me better than intel ever has, but then again I haven't had the chance to own a dual core intel to know for myself how much they have really improved since.
Jul 2, 2009. 2:57 AMAussieJake44 says:
i was an amd man up until pentium 4 (given didn't buy) and liked it. but intel most certainly outdid themselves with the core2 series especially the 8*** series dual cores, and the intel virtualisation technology is excellent considering for me as i run virtual machines. i think so far the only upside for me is that am3 series is cheap, and reliable. i think i did see a video on youtube somewhere of a team from the netherlands oc-ing a new am3 to 6ghz using liquid helium. but all in all i just think amd isnt worth it at the moment.
Jul 2, 2009. 7:49 AMPunkguyta says:
I think you may be right, perhaps when I buy a new motherboard this summer I'll look into changing over to a core duo, however I happen to have a 64 bit AMD processor sitting here I found one day, but no mobo to go with it, perhaps it would be cheaper just to get a mobo for the 64 bit processor, and I'm willing to bet that will give me the extra power I need.
Apr 14, 2009. 11:57 AMzs says:
i still have a few k6's i love them to this day
Sep 25, 2007. 1:53 PMhack124x768 says:
That's funny, as my brother is using a 650Mhz p3 and is too lazy to upgrade to a 1Ghz athalon I got him. I'm an intel man myself, but not by choice. Only by availability. I got a p4 board for cheap, now I have a p4 system. Rockin 2.8Ghz here, thinking about going to a 3.4Ghz soon. An k6 amd chip would be a more shiny buckly though...
Mar 12, 2009. 8:31 PMhellstudios says:
3.0 ghz person right here. :D
Jun 12, 2009. 11:28 AMMadrias357 says:
3.0 originally, but I'm overclocked to 3.2 on stock air with a P4 version 531.
Feb 28, 2009. 8:24 PMPunkguyta says:
I have a 2.66ghz p4 mobo here with 2 gigs of ram sitting here and I only use it for movie encoding. My main "PC" is an AMD sempron 2400 @ 2.0ghz. It's lacking now adays, but it's top of the line for back in the day when it was first released.
Sep 25, 2007. 8:56 PMPunkguyta says:
Amd is just more...reliable, and good for overclocking. Besides, known fact says that amd cpu's of the same speed of a certain intel cpu are more efficient and faster.
Mar 11, 2009. 2:58 PMbaneat says:
This is true of the single core era. That is the "whitest and nerdiest" belt I've seen in my life! lol!
Feb 28, 2009. 7:30 PMred-king says:
i like intel. my amd processor that i had gave out on me and i had to replace it with intel. that intel processor has already lasted 2 times longer than the amd one did.
Sep 25, 2007. 10:05 PMhack124x768 says:
Well, I dunno. I've never followed the race much. I do know that If I unplug the fan on my p4, it will survive because of the throttling. I don't think an athalon will adjust as quickly. This really isn't the place for a cpu flame ware though. :p
Sep 27, 2007. 3:36 PMPunkguyta says:
Lol okay, Although I will point out that amd's can survive without a fan themselves, and that's at 100% throttle, not this p4 auto-throttle shit.
Mar 1, 2009. 5:20 PMdata23 says:
ya i just use what i can get on a budget! but ive heard that amd is da best for heavy gaming/vid editing stuff
Jul 2, 2009. 2:59 AMAussieJake44 says:
true of single cores not of dual cores and/or quad cores.
Sep 25, 2007. 8:40 AMgmjhowe says:
yes, they made some good chips, shame they kinda biting the dust atm really.
Sep 22, 2009. 2:15 AMGizmosis says:
nice idea kingalexl, but if you were going to tuck in your shirt, then the top row of pins and soldier might be visible. unless you are skilled at soldering this might end up looking quite ugly not to mention a possible impeedment of the buckle mechanics. (Just an observation from a technicaly minded individual.)
Sep 25, 2009. 2:03 PMred-king says:
i'm not skilled at soldering... so that WOULD be a problem. haha.
Aug 30, 2009. 5:28 PMuberinsane says:
I had a really old pentium I processor I was hoping to make a belt buckle out of. Unfortunately it had this plastic substance gluing the heat sink to the cpu (definitely did not feel like normal thermal paste) and in the process of removing it with a knife, the plastic stuff took off half of the intel logo!!! :( Now I will have to use a Pentium Pro!
Feb 27, 2009. 10:51 PMDELETED_gabethegeek says:
(removed by author or community request)
Aug 25, 2009. 6:23 PMyellowtwo says:
I was going to make this point as well. I am glad someone got it out long ago. I never use leaded solder on anything, I even use the friendlier flux.
Jun 28, 2009. 12:21 AMMaruaderFox says:
Might try this, but use an old 1.8ghz 478 CPU , so it's less likely to be ripped off,
May 1, 2009. 4:57 PMjmacfarlane823 says:
Best Instructable EVER!!! i used Krazy Glue to connect my proc to the belt buckle, and so far it has stuck...
Apr 15, 2009. 11:31 PMfadein says:
I did this, but with a couple of modifications. 1. Instead of bending the pins, I used a file and ground them off. Took a bit more elbow grease, but I was able to get a better surface on the reverse. 2. Instead of solder I used household 100% silicone adhesive manufactured by DAP. Waterproof and not as likely to damage teh grey matter. I think (it was a while ago) that I used the file and scuffed up the front of the belt buckle a bit so the adhesive would have a rough surface to grab onto. I made mine over 4 years ago, and the adhesive has held fast all along. And the ceramic material my i486 was encased in is surprisingly resilient. I've made a few very small scratches over the years, but it's still clearly an intel i486 DX 33. In fact, the buckle has outlasted the original belt!
Mar 7, 2009. 9:51 PMYerboogieman says:
I think i'll stick with my seat belt.
Feb 28, 2009. 7:33 PMred-king says:
couldn't you have bent some of the pins around the original belt buckle to strengthen it further? just an idea... not sure it would work... but it might be worth a try...
Dec 25, 2007. 3:41 AMshaunak says:
Intel: Leap ahead ... unto your belt srry bout the poor joke but someone beat me to the intel outside comment...and intel changed their tagline....
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