[DanG]

I may not be around as much on the forums (as in 21 hours a day instead of 22) because my computer fried. The company that built my computer for me put in a small heatsink and not enough case fans, so my processor overheated (20C over max) and began to stink, so I'll have to send it back to the assemblers. I'll be on, but I'll be using other people's computers, so that's why I won't be here as much.

Why am I telling you this? Well, posting an "informative" message about why I won't be online as much is a good excuse to complain.

Maybe I should get one of those silent liquid-cooling cases.

 

[CaptBubba]

Heh, feel sorry for you. Must have been an Athlon, because Pentiums are supposed to turn off before they die. Anyway, you're not alone, I just had to reformat, tons of fun. At least next time I'll have a ghost copy.

 

[kerykeion]

Sorry to hear the death of your processor ... but to make things a bit more cheerful, check out THG:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/index.html

The video footage (downloadable on the last page of the article) is hot stuff--literally.

There was some debate on his footage last week...supposedly the Athlons that overheated and flamed up were pre-production ones.

 

[ai0tron]

Even better than the liquid cooled variety might be a Peltier cooler... If you are actually serious about extreme cooling. Peltier coolers are essentially a flat square thing that when electricity is applied to it one side gets REALLY cold and the other side gets ReALLY hot. Put the cold side on your cpu and a heatsink and fan on the hotside and lower your temp on a 1200 mGZ athlon to about 5 degrees celsius. In fact these babies get so cold they can freeze your processor causing ice to form... Which of course means that when the ice melts you've got water all over your motherboard... Some of these coolers are reported to work well without problems but it's generally recommeneded that you only use them with processors that get really hot. Of course you will probably have to buy a second power supply or a much better power supply since one of these babies uses about 80 watts of power.

Which reminds me, check to make sure it wasnt your power supply that melted down. I had that happen to me once and it stunk like burning plastic for a couple of days before it completely melted.

 

[Odeen]

ai0tron - Peltier coolers are fine and dandy, but remember that they are _heat pumps_ - they take heat from one side and transfer it to the other side. And the other side you need to cool (again).

Peltiers were popular on older chips (say, the infamous Celeron 366) that didn't put out quite as much heat, and spread it over a larger surface. A 50-watt CPU that's kept cold by a 50-watt Peltier cooler (or larger) - and the heatsink then only needs to dissipate 100 watts, with CPU running close to 0 degrees.

But new CPU's output 100-odd watts of heat by themselves. And attaching a peltier that can't transfer that much heat (say, that same 50-watt peltier) will essentially INSULATE the processor, instead of cooling it. And getting rid of 200 watts of power (the 100 watts transferred from the CPU + 100 from the Peltier) is nearly impossible with conventional methods. It _is_ possible, however, with a nice big waterblock...