Zorac (zorac) wrote,
Zorac
zorac
  • Mood: chipper
  • Music: I haven't re-installed WinAmp yet, you insensitive clod

PC update

Finally have my machine working to spec - tweaking the BIOS to force the memory to run at the same speed as the CPU rather than insanely fast seems to have done the trick. After making that change I could put my RAM in without the annoyingly cheerful audio warning and subsequent failure to boot. Hurrah. Re-installation of extraneous crud has continued apace, and the bootup time is back up to it's normal value rather than the blink-and-you'll-miss-it times on a bare XP install. On the plus side, I've discovered the Hibernate function - this saves the systems state to disc, bringing back the ultra-fast boot time with the added bonus that all your apps are exactly where you left them when you shut down. Ran some benchmarks and am suitably pleased with the speed increases - go go Google Compute.

Case:Cooler Master ATC 200 - swanky aluminium case (see userpic above for my actual colour-scheme) with all-thumbscrew design, slide-out mobo-tray, and 4 (count em) cooling fans.
PSU:Enermax 350W top-quality, dual-fan design
Motherboard:ASUS A7N8X Deluxe - nForce2 chipset, on-board everything (2 Serial, 1 Parallel, PS2 Mouse/Keyboard, 6 USB2, 2 1394/Firewire/iLink, 2 NICs, 5.1-channel audio, ATA133 & Serial ATA, etc, etc
CPU:AMD Athlon XP 2000 (retail, w/heatsink&fan
Memory:2 x Corsair XMS3200 512Mb
Video:PNY Verto GeForce4 Ti4600 AGP 4x, 128Mb DDR - Mwahahahaha!
Videologic DVD Player - Hardware DVD/MPEG2 decoder w/TV out
Disks:Generic 3.5" Floppy
Philips CD-RW/DVD-ROM Drive
Creative 5x DVD-ROM Drive
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120Gb HD
Old Maxtor HD
Accessories:Creative 4.1 speakers
Samsung ML-6050 (old laser printer scrounged from work)
Relisys GenieScan4600 (A4 flatbed USB scanner)
LEGO webcam and Mindstorms IR tower
Saitek Cyborg Digital 3D joystick (similar)
Palm IIIc cradle
OS:Windows XP Professional
RedHat Linux 7.3 to follow soon
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  • 4 comments

jiggery_pokery

December 8 2002, 07:37:35 UTC 18 years ago

Four cooling fans? That seems like quite a lot to me. Add the two in the PSU (...unless I misunderstand?) and the one on the CPU and you've got quite an effective little hairdryer there. Out of curiosity, why are you going to such great lengths to have a cool computer when you aren't going to be overclocking it - or are you?

How noisy is it in practice?

zorac

December 8 2002, 08:41:32 UTC 18 years ago

Don't forget the one on the video card ;-) The last version even had a fan on the mothernoard... I was doing some overclocking in the past, but even without that, plenty of airflow is always a good thing for stability etc - CPU is currently in the mid 50s.

As for noise, it's not really any noisier than any other PC - all the case fans etc are larger diameter and slower, and therefore fairly quiet.

jiggery_pokery

December 9 2002, 08:51:53 UTC 18 years ago

What's a safe temperature for a PC? The new motherboard has an onboard thermo which you can see during bootup - the CPU has peaked at about 45 °C and the system as a whole inside occasionally approaches 35 °C.

Doesn't seem too high to me...

zorac

December 9 2002, 09:11:05 UTC 18 years ago

I certainly wouldn't worry about either of those temperatures, certainly the system one seems normal, and te CPU would need to be about 15°C warmer before I'd start to worry. Be glad of the heatsink though, having seen (videos of) what happens without - CPU to somkin' silicon in about 3 seconds flat.