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Domain: coolerguys.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to coolerguys.com.

Comments · 12

  1. My Dream Machine by Barkmullz · · Score: 1 · on What Would Be Your Dream Machine?

    Here's mine:

    1. Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Processor - $970.00
    2. 2 x EVGA GeForce 8800GTX KO Video Cards in SLI - $1,299.98
    3. EVGA 680i Motherboard - $249.99
    4. 4 GB Corsair Dominator (PC2 9136) Memory - $878.00
    5. Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite - $259.99
    6. 4 x Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptor Hard Drives (RAID 0) - $919.96
    7. 4 x Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB Hard Drives (RAID 1) - $1,519.96
    8. Koolance PC4-1036BK - $618.95
    9. 2 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP Monitors - $3,398.00
    10. Lian-Li F1A Computer Desk - $2,895.00
    11. Das Keyboard - $89.95
    12. Logitech MX Revolution Mouse - $89.99
    Total: $13,189.77

  2. Electrostatic Air Filtration by MBCook · · Score: 5, Informative · on An Affordable Air Purifier For Dusty Computer Labs?
    I would think that a form of electrostatic air filtration would do the best job. Sharper Image has two or three (here, or here) would be the kind of thing your after. There are different sizes, etc, but this is probably the best thing you can get. On top of this, you might want to invest in some of those fan filter covers for computer fans that are made of fabric or whatever to keep dust out. There are some here, here, and here. I would think that the combination of these things would keep you pretty low on dust. That said, make sure to clean the air purifier and check the fan filters every once in a while to make sure they're clear or else thing might end up worse than before. Once the room is clean (after the first week or whatever) and you've cleaned everything out, I'd imagine that you'd wouldn't have to check the fan filters much at all (maybe only when working on that specific PC) as long as you keep the electrostatic air filter going on clean.

    Also, see if you can talk to whoever in incharge of the heating/AC system in the building to see if there is anything they can do. Maybe Allergy Free has a filter that would work with the system or maybe you could get together the with the other groups of people in the building and buy an electrostatic air filtration system for the whole building. They work great on both dust and allergies. These are just wild ideas from brainstorming, they really aren't that realistic I guess. The first paragraph though will probably work well.

    PS: We have electrostatic air filters installed in our house. We also had them installed in the house we had before this one. Our family has allergy problems and when we clean them, you'd be amazed the colors the water turns from what comes off them. They really do catch alot.

    PPS: Or you could just watercool everything and run it all through one massive radiator. But this would be a bit more than $500. More pipedreaming.

  3. Re:Piezoelectric fans are already available by Harumuka · · Score: 2, Informative · on Wriggling Heat Sinks
    Ouch. But, considering that you'd need 20 or so of those to replace a single conventional fan in flow rate, you'd be able to get their bulk prices.
    Not a bad estimate. Considering computer fans typically move 20-30 CFM, although high-end fans which blow more than 50 CFM), you would need 10 to 15 piezoelectric fans to achieve equivalent volume air flow. In 5-24 quantites they cost $79, so that translates to $790 to $1185.

    Of course, laptop manufacturers could buy in bulk (100+) easily at $39. $390 to $585 per fan, significantly less.

    Yet, according to the article these are novelty fans. If it costs manufacturers $149 per novelty fan, I wonder what the "real" thing costs...

  4. Make sure the heatsink can handle a fan outage. by FrankieBoy · · Score: 1 · on The Joys Of Losing Your Cooling Device

    Tom speaks about both a heat-sink falling off and fan failure. For the latter I'd recommend taking steps to see that your heat-sink is up to snuff. Yes, yes, yes...I'm well aware that passive cooling won't work for the overclockers but if your fan kicks out and you're not around it's nice to know that you might be able to survive a CPU meltdown if the heatsink itself is robust. I'm not saying that this is the way you want to run your rig but it might be enough to save it in an emergency.

    I've used many types of cooling systems from water-cooling to peltier to a failed experiment in immersing a motherboard in mineral oil (kinda like a Cray) and I've found that a nice old-fashioned big-ass heatsink will get you by. Peltiers are dangerous because if they lose power they actually start acting like and insulator and speed up the destruction. Water cooling works great for cooling but I'm still nervous leaving the machine on when I'm not around, I get the same feeling when I leave my place with the dishwasher on. Most heat sinks that come with off-the-rack systems are useless, I buy heatsinks as birthday presents for people I know that have bought Dells. If the heat sink falls off there's not much you can do unless you've got a successful mineral-oil-immersed motherboard ;)

    Here's some good info sites:

    www.ocaddiction.com

    www.coolerguys.com

    www.overclockershideout.com

    www.frozencpu.com

    www.extremecooling.org

    Motherboard Monitor a nice utility.

  5. Good places for quiet stuff by eschasi · · Score: 1 · on Building Quieter Computers
    I made this same search a few months back; wound up buying some Panasonic `Panaflo' 80mm fans, model L1A. They're at least an order of magnitude quieter than the ones that came with my case but move about 1/3 less air. I fixed that by removing two and installing three. :-)

    There's a lot of interesting stuff out there that people have done or things you can buy; here's a set of bookmarks I assembled a few months back:


    http://blacktree.homepage.com/basement/pstweak.htm l
    http://blacktree.homepage.com/basement/blackbox.ht ml
    http://www.3dfxcool.com/
    http://www.coolermaster.com/products/systemcase.ht ml
    http://www.coolerguys.com/
    http://www.coolerxtreme.com/

    Just recently I stumbled across this one, which has real numbers on cooling but only subjective on noise: http://www.tweakmax.com/html/fs020_2/fs020_2-1.cfm

  6. antec "performace series" cases by The_Messenger · · Score: 2 · on Cool Case
    I've been using an Antec "Performance Series Workstation Tower" for about a year, and I think it's great. It has two 80mm fan mounts at the anterior (intake), two more at the posterior (outtake), an easily removable side panel, and quick-release drive bays. It may seem like overkill, but SMP x86 systems with SCSI-3 disks tend to get very warm. :-) Just keep the case under your desk or in a closet and the fan noise shouldn't bother you too much.

    Here's a suggestion... this case has almost an inch of space between the front of the metal chassis (where two of the fans are) and the removable plastic front. Buy an AC air filter, cut out a couple 8cm squares, and tape the pieces to the front of the metal to keep the fans from sucking in so much dust. Change the filters every two months or so. (That seems to work for me, and my systems are on 24/7/365.) You can buy filters which are designed to screw directly onto the face of the fans, but because of this case's snap-in fan mounts, those type of filters won't fit.

    I own three Antec cases and have had no problems with them... the company seems to employ some really nice people, too.

    I've bought all of my Antec cases from TechStore. You can buy the case I described (the SX830) for about $75 here. This is not an inexpensive case, but if you run powerful systems and/or overclock, I think it's a great investment. The case only comes with two fans, so you'll want to buy two more. Good sources for cooling supplies are Millisec and Cooler Guys.

    --
    Ellison: How are you gentlemen !! All your database are belong to us

  7. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.

  8. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.

  9. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.

  10. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.

  11. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.

  12. abit bp6 is wonderful by Jesus+Christ · · Score: 1 · on ABIT BP6 Motherboard explicitly supports FreeBSD
    I have been running FreeBSD on a BP6 a while now, and I think it's great. Even if you aren't interested in SMP, it's a great Celeron mainboard.

    Good things about the BP6:

    • Ultra ATA/66 support. In addition to the two "regular" IDEs. That means you can hook up six IDE devices instead of four.
    • One AGP slot, five dedicated PCI slots, and two dedicated ISA slots.
    • An **excellent** BIOS, complete with independant CPU temperature monitoring. The Celeron is very overclockable, and the BP6 BIOS is wonderful for this. You get a lot of MHz options, not just 66 and 100. I'm currently using Celeron 400s, both O/C to 500MHz at 6x83MHz. Very sweet.
    • 768MB max RAM!!

    I've been soooooooooo happy with this system.

    Yes, it is true that the FreeBSD SMP kernel isn't as "fast" as Linux's. However, IMHO it is more stable. And even if it weren't, I'd rather run it with one processor than switch to Linux. But that's just my deal.

    One downside: cooling. If you are planning on building a system with this board, get a full tower. Two O/C Celerons will get rather hot, and if you toss in a 7200rpm HDD or two, you will be cooking. You'll need the extra space in the full tower just for cooling supples. Run over to CoolerGuys and stock up now. Here is my personal experience cooling with this mainboard:

    • Those Celerons will get hot even running at rated speed. The stock Intel fan/heatsink combo is not suffient for an SMP system. I recommend the Alpha NovaTech PAL6035. A less expensive option is the Global Win VFP32
    • 7200rpm HDDs need cooling. Try a Baycooler or an Istorm.
    • Also nice are the slot coolers. I use the Vantec. PC Power & Cooling makes a funky looking one which I can't recommend.
    • If you aren't careful or have a small case, the IDE cables can block the CPU1 fan. This will cause a 1 - 4 degree farenheit rise in that CPUs temperature.

    Note: I am not affialiated with Cooler Guys, but I buy all of my crap from them, so those were the links I had handy.

    I have gotten the CPUs up past 112F without lockups in this mainboard, but I'd recommend keeping things below 95. This isn't easy but your HDDs will last longer if you keep things cool.

    Enough ranting for now. I just love that BP6!!

    I am the Lord.