snarfyboy.com

Heatsink of extraordinary magnitude

Posted by snarfyboy on 31 March 2005 at 09:54 PM

Well, I bought a new heatsink and fan for my PC. My stock heatsink that came with my Pentium sounded like a jet engine after playing WoW for a while, plus my CPU was constantly hitting he 70C mark while playing, which is pretty hot. So I decided to experiment with non-standard heatsinks and thermal pastes and cpu cleaning. All new to me.

I bought a new fan that combined silence and better heat dispersion, based on reviews.

Thing is, it's huge. I was worried it wouldn't fit in my PC, it's that big. Tonight I finally gave it my best shot at installation. Here's the new ZALMAN CPNS7700-Cu being installed into the PC:

Here we see it dominating the board:

Here's a side on view of the mounting. I was sure it was going to hit the RAM sticks, but it cleared with plenty of room:

Finally, here it sits inside the PC case (before I reconnected the wiring and reinserted the video card). I was worried about clearance with the power supply, but again, it fit with plenty of room:

I am a bit disappointed however. After playing WoW for an hour or so, the temperature difference didn't seem any improved. However, I was playing with my windows closed, something I couldn't do before. This lack of performance may also be because I need to wait for the Arctic Silver thermal paste to fully bond or melt or whatever it does after 200 hours of use. Or I simply screwed up the installation. I'll give it a few days and see how or if it improves.

One thing is for sure, I hooked the fan up directly so it constantly runs at maximum speed - and it is a lot quieter. So if anything, it was worth it for that.

Finally, I might add - compare this heatsink to my previous entry. Now you get some idea of how old that heatsink was.

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Oldness

Posted by snarfyboy on 18 March 2005 at 04:37 PM

So I am trying to put my old monitor on my dad's PC, which is a relic. Now it won't restart. This seems to happen every time I have to disconnect stuff on the back. This time seems to be the last time. I mean, look at this thing's processor:

That's from back when they first realized that they needed to use a fan on pentiums. About 1993. I mean look at that heatsink! It's not more then a piece of metal with a few fins!

Speaking of old, today I spent about an hour or so questing with someone in WoW. Then he asks how old I am and I say, "38" (technically not true, I still have almost two weeks of being 37).

Then he responds a few seconds later: "Oh, I am 12".

And I thought that Pentium was old. When I was 12, I had to beg my parents for a video game: it was called "Pong".

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Happy Birthday to me!

Posted by snarfyboy on 15 March 2005 at 10:07 PM

I treated myself to a birthday present (a couple weeks early): a new monitor. It's a Dell 2405FPW. That's 24" of wisescreen glory. Here are some pictures for Trent and anyone else that wants to see.

Here's the best shot I got, using a flash, watching a DVD (Shaun of the Dead!):

I wanted a close up, but the flash kept interfering. My Tripod helped but it still doesn't look so hot. At any rate, here is Everquest 2 at 1920x1200 (well the photo has been shrunk to 640x480, but you know what I mean):

WoW doesn't look nearly as pretty when blown up to gigantor sizes. I'll try and get a better shot later, I took a ton and I can't believe how crappy most came out. The flash simply wouldn't let me take a head on shot. Here's a full system shot without a flash:

Trent will say I posted that last one as an excuse to put Dominic Monaghan on my website. He'd be right too.

The system has forced a lot of stuff off of my desk, and now I don't know where to put it. But on the plus side, the monitor basically as big as my TV, so I can remove that from the bedroom. Problem is, the monitor is high-def, and TV looks really flawed on it. In fact, I can see artifacting in DVDs too. Guess it's time to upgrade to high-def everything.