The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Russ, you did see my above post right?

I didn't get a reply, so I went ahead anyway and generously applied MX-2 paste around the Nforce 405/GF6100 northbridge chip. It went up in flames...

Nah, just kidding. It seemed to keep it cooler longer though. Though I used a can of air and sprayed the heatsink while the computer was booting up It effects the temperatures highly rapidly. Even lightly spraying air had a noticeable impact. But it still idles at 54C according to everest. That's a ridiculous NB temp for idle! There must be something wrong with it to be idling so hot. In order to cool it now, I would have to direct a substantial amount of air at the chip. But with how much money it would take to limp the board, shouldn't I simply replace it? At this point, to keep the sucker going, I'm guessing a ~40mm heatsink, and a 40mm fan with substantial CFM would do the job.

Opinions?

 

Oman7,
Sorry about that, but Hotmail was down on and off for several hours, with a lot of false starts. I'll look around and see if I have one of those heatsinks. If I do I will send it Post haste! Then Our ISP started acting up, maybe because of what ever knocked out Hotmail. I'm still having a sound issue, and I thought I found it when I used Driver Magician to remove both the M$ and the Realtek HD Audio drivers, and discovered Malware (System32\WINSYS2.EXE) in the Realtek Azalia driver, that popped up after it had uninstalled it. I quarantined it and re-installed the drivers, but it's still a little off, and the video anomaly is still there. I talked to Gigabyte and they asked me to talk to AMD first and see what they thought. Considering that I have changed everything but the drives and case, I went ahead and yanked the 630 out of Oxi and put it in my machine, and I'll be damned if the problem didn't disappear. Called AMD back and they want me to send my 955 in for a replacement, and are sending me an RMA. Only problem is that I accidentally sold the only AM2/AM2+ spare chip I had. Somehow I got it mixed up with the socket 754 Sempron I had, and got the boxes mixed up, so I have nothing I can put in it for temporary. If anybody has a spare socket AM2 or an AM2+ CPU laying around doing nothing, please let me know, even if it's a single core. It will still work better than that POS Dell GX150 did. I can't go through all of that again, so if anyone has one I can beg, borrow or steal, please PM me. It would be most appreciated.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I may be able to cut one of my larger CPU heatsinks. I got a bunch of them Unfortunately none of them are copper. What do you think of that? I think it should be 40mm. the stock 25mm sink is a joke...

 

Oman7,
It really doesn't matter if it is copper, as I saw no real difference between the Forged Copper Enzotec, and the stock Aluminum one on the P35-DS3R, using the same fan, a degree or less of difference! Hang in there my friend, I have a ton of old motherboards to look through yet! BTW! Ceramique would be the best. Chipsets were what it was originally designed for! Not really designed for ZIF socket CPUs, as it will pull the chip out of the socket and maybe damage the pins.

Hey, I just found an Athlon 64 3800+ Lima chip. If it's any good, it will do! If I'm up to it, Ill give it a shot tomorrow!

Best Regards.
Russ

 

Ahh very cool Russ. Fan of the Athlon 64s myself

I mean put it this way: The Athlon 64 is still a viable chip for most machines. The Pentium 4 is not. They competed directly. Nuff said

 

Russ, you're too kind LOL! Please don't send me anything just yet. I love experimenting. And I may have something figured

 

Ha ha! It ended up slightly larger than I hoped, but I may be able to make it work with a zip tie
Here's a little comparison of the old to new. If that doesn't effect the temps, nothing will!

 

Oman7,
OK! I'll bite. What would you use the zip-tie for?

Russ

 

To fasten down the sink. But it looks like that may be a no go. Or at least with my current supplies. Gonna have to buy some thinner ones...

 

Instead of going the zip tie method, I used some cotton string about as thick as typical yarn. I was a bit skeptical about going that method. But now I've seen 30 minutes of idle. The temperature has dropped 11C easy! just by increasing the Heatsink size. I was of course quite generous with the MX-2 paste as well as another glob of Diamond paste in the center. I don't doubt it can play an entire full length BD tomorrow. But I would like to slap a fan on it for extra insurance. I have one on the way.

This has been an interesting experiment. I should do this more often. Hands on experience is definitely a good way to learn some stuff. It certainly is for me. I wasn't a classroom kind of guy. Though I did well on tests, I did not like doing homework. My grades showed that :S

Cotton is generally not conductive, but I do not recommend doing this. I'm a lazy man. I usually always take the lazy mans approach. Though if I had money, I would probably do this better. Actually, if I had money, I would have simply replaced the board The chip is obviously aging. Nvidia really should be ashamed for using such a joke of a heatsink though...

Here is what I've deemed "String Theory" LOL!!!

 

The funny thing is, the replacement heatsink now looks the correct size!

 

Yah, no joke LOL!

 

http://vr-zone.com/articles/western-digital-caviar-green-3tb-wd30ezrs-now-available/10103.html

 

Oman7,
Hey Dude, check it out. Here's the answer to your problem!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100005

Mount the 40mm fan on the top of it before you install it, and presto, you will be all set. Won't fall off either!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Wow at the complexity of the 3TB drives, in addition to needing a 64-bit OS, they also come with their own S-ATA card as most chipset drives don't support large capacity drives. Certainly not the everyman's hard drive. Is disappointing companies haven't been more proactive in sorting this mess out.

 

Sam,
Did you notice that it's a "storage only" drive?

Russ

 

Yeah that's been common knowledge from a while, as BIOSes can't boot from such drives. That limitation should disappear fairly soon though once EFI becomes standard.

Edit: supposedly it can still be used as a data drive for 32-bit OSes, just can't be booted from unless you're using 64-bit Vista or 7, or some builds of Linux.

 

question about Win7. is it the 64bit version that has driver compatibility issues or is it just windows 7 in itself.

i just bought the home premium version it has both the 32bit and 64 bit. i had the 4bit RC version that gave me the issues with my printer drivers i wonder if i install the 32 bit version would it not have the driver issue? or with this being the final/actual and not the RC version would it be an different?

 

I would think almost any printer issue, would be on the Manufacturer. HP, Epson, Canon, etc. Other than a curious Flash drive issue, My epson performs flawlessly. During the Beta testing this was not so LOL! Epson released "7" drivers shortly after the beta testing. It's not necessarily M$'s fault Windows 7 really is the next XP/2000. The OS generally runs smoothly.