[ale] hardware woes, final (hopefully) update

[Jeff Hubbs]

The fan/heatsink assemblies that I've worked with generally have the
fans blowing into the heatsink and exhausting willy-nilly out the sides.

I've never been terribly happy with this, since it stands to reason that
some fraction of the air thus heated gets sucked back into the fan to be
heated some more.  And, I've lately become more sensitive to machine
noise, and so there's this battle between windspeed and noise that
people throw all kinds of money at.

But, you know, going by what that totally unopinionated and passive Jim
Kinney says, it's not altogether wise to succumb to the temptation to
run your machine "just cool enough" where it won't lock up.  You only
accelerate - maximize, really, when you think about it - the
atomic-level decay that Jim was referring to.  

I have a Slot A K7/700 that would lock up when run at its RATED speed
and I wound up underclocking it for a good long time, having done
everything I could think of to cool the puppy down shy of watercooling,
but eventually it locked up regardless and I replaced it with a K7/750
that is burbling along at my feet as I type this, gently overclocked to
IIRC 787MHz, completing my 5989th SETI at Home work unit.  Well, maybe it's
not exactly "burbling."

The expense keeps me from going the water route, but I'm sorely tempted
to.  I have one full-tower case that I would love to modify by cutting
out a rectangular hole in the top for a big radiator and building an
airbox into the whole upper section, fed by two revved-down 80MM fans. 
This would do the job of getting most of the CPU heat right out of the
box as opposed to the typical heat-exchanger-in-situ arrangement of
fan/heatsink on the CPU and trying to blow outside air past the whole
mobo.  Whereas I may try to fabricate my own reservoir and insert a
store-bought pump, the machined copper waterblocks that are available
and the radiators offered for sale would be hard to beat.

- Jeff

On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 22:09, J.M. Taylor wrote:
> There's a long story here, but I'll try to make it short.  I bought a big
> ThermalTake fan for this CPU when I bought it, took it out of the box,
> clipped it onto the CPU, attached the mb to the case, etc. No problems
> (er, well, you know what I mean).  Tonight I went to re-seat it and put
> more thermal goo on it to see if maybe it just wasn't cooling right, and I
> find out that not only does the fan part unscrew from the heatsink part,
> but the damn fan was on UPSIDE DOWN.  I almost cried.  All this time my oh
> so expensive CPU fan was blowing hot air onto my CPU.
> 
> Before you laugh or throw things at me, I want to re-iterate that I did
> not do this!  It came that way, and well I don't know much about fan
> blades, i figured it was supposed to go that way.   My guess is that it
> was a return and whoever had it before reassembled it incorrectly.
> 
> Having the fan on the right way 'round brought my CPU temperature down
> SIXTY SEVEN degrees F.
> 
> I'm going to still run the memory check tonight in case the memory is
> damaged too, and my CPU appears to have given up and died a horrible
> death.
> 
> I really, really appreciate all the help.  I'm going to crawl off and weep
> now for my stupid luck.
> 
> Jenn
> 
> 
> Geoffrey said:
> > John Wells wrote:
> >> 172 degrees farenheit?!?!?  That's like 78 degress celcius!
> >>
> >> Damn...that's pretty up there.  In fact, that's on the threshold of
> >> the temp at which AMD says your CPU will die.
> >
> >
> > Actually the max is 90, but that's still too close for me.  Does the
> > motherboard manual have any limits it suggests?  Here's a link to amd
> > site with the temp specs:
> >
> > http://139.95.253.213/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=22,E=0000000000058089134,K=462,Sxi=18,Case=obj(3737)
> >
> >>
> >> How long has it been running that hot?  To give you an idea, my
> >> machine's CPU (Athlon XP 2200+) hovers between 42 and 47 degrees
> >> celcius, or 107-116 degrees farenheit.
> >
> > Athlon xp 1800+ here, cpu is 38 C, mb is 27 C.
> >
> > --
> > Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net
> >
> > The latest, most widespread virus?  Microsoft end user agreement.
> > Think about it...
> 
> 
> 
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