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A Few Hardware Bits
Zygo writes "Most people seemed to like the hardware bites so here's another edition:
A small HD @ GideonTech, the VapoChill PE @ [H]ard|OCP, a big GPU cooler @ OCAddiction, PSU Relay Timer guide @ Virtual-Hideout, a water cooling kit on OverClocker Café, Heat spreaders on OCIA , and to end a PSU at Exteme Overclocking"
I dunno about the details of VapoChill, but in principle a refrigerator could have its 'hot end' glowing red, thereby increasing heat transfer rate. Remember that the refrigerator only moves the heat around, it doesn't eliminate it. The hot end must be cooled somehow. But unlike the processor, its temperature is not limited by the silicon.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Heat spreaders do absolutely nothing but look good inside a windowed case. They run no cooler or hotter, and noone has gotten ram to perform any better with or without them.
Your DIMMs will actually run better with a little bit of a breeze moving stale air off of the chips than it would with a piece of aluminum stuck on with a length of sticky 'thermal' tape.
It's just something to sell to the 'eXTreMe l337 p00ter h4xorz!'
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Windows 2000 picks up one CPU with HT as two _real_ cpu's, XP/Pro detect it as a CPU with HT.
As such, Win2k needs double the number of cpu licenses (so for a dual processor HT Xeon box, you need the next version of Win2k up, with 4 processor support.)
There are a few cheaper models which don't come with a power adapter, expecting to be powered off the USB bus. The thing is, they report their peak load demand to the system's USB power manager, which is the hard drive spinup wattage. This is higher than most USB power busses can deliver, and the result is a current over limit warning and the inability to use the drive.
The fun comes in, because several of these use nonstandard power jacks (and in at least one case, the model hasn't an external power jack at all). You'll be left modifying the case yourself, trying to find the nonstandard power adapter, or trying to find one of the cheaper USB 2.0 cards without limit protection.
My GEIL DDR 256MB came with a spreader, it's kinda odd, as I don't think it's going to do much of a job as a heatsink, but it does afford a bit more surface area and that ram does get warm. And overclocking memory, from what I've heard, does make it run hotter, just like when you OC a CPU. Sockets being as close together as they are, I don't think there's much else that can safely be done to heatsink your memory. Many something vertical with a few blunt spines which won't cut into cables.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I put an Iceberg I in my kids' Athlon XP 1900+ in the first part of September. It worked great for almost three months and then the heat exchanger (radiator) sprung a leak and fried my GeForce3 video card. I wrote that off since I was planning on upgrading it soon anyway. I also considered myself to be extremely lucky to have only lost something so easily replaced.
However, what burns me is the response I have received (or, lack thereof) from exoticpc.com (where I bought the fscking thing). BTW, their website is not working for me in Mozilla right now, but Konqeror seems to work.
I originally emailed them telling them about the radiator leak and asked for a refund. They did reply the next day saying that they would not return my money. But, I was told that they would give me a new reservoir since I had apparently screwed mine in too tightly and ruined it -- which is not the case, the reservoir is not leaking.
They apparently didn't bother to even read my complaint. I made it clear that the problem was with the radiator, not the reservoir. Here is my original message:
and, their reply:At any rate, I then replied to their mail asking for a replacement heat exchanger or radiator or whatever you call it. It has been ten days since I replied to their mail and I have not received any response. I just sent off another email to exoticpc.com hoping that it will elicit a response. (in case this post doesn'tThanks for reading. I feel a little better now.