Spring Cleaning

with the warmer weather approaching I noticed my computer was running a little warmer so after a quick inspection I noticed all of the winters dust had settled inside my computer.

So a little help from the vacuum and I was all set, I think thats one thing a lot of people tend to forget about and it can really slow your computer down and damage the hardware inside with the extreme heat and all. For instance this picture

this was one someone brought me to fix late last summer, I still dont know how it even still managed to boot or do much of anything. I like to take a shop vac and put the hose in the exhaust port and blow the dust out that way you don't risk static damaging anything also you can keep the hose back a foot or so where if you are using the vacuum to suck the dust out you need to make contact or get very close to delicate parts.

New Cooling

The stock fan and heat sink on my Intel CPU wasn't cooling enough so I decided to get a new one, after some research I found this one It had a 5/5 rating on this site and the small price of it made it that much better. I installed it today and to my surprise it dropped my idle temps by 7-9 degree's. The Heat sink is HUGE I am lucky I have enough room for it. I haven't over clocked it as of yet since the stock heat sink was so bad but this weekend I may try and bump it up a little to see how well this set up works. right now I have about 40% load on both cores and my temps are about 35 C where they were running about 43 C before.

Raidmax Case

My new case came today a Raidmax smilodon, of all the systems I have put together this case stands out I highly recommend this case.
It came with instructions in English that I could actually use and understand not to mention the packaging they did with it could withstand all the abuse UPS can give it. Th case itself is awesome since the sides fold down to get to everything it reminds me of a server the way its simple to access everything.
The case is very well made 28 pounds empty so after you get all the goodies inside it, it can be rather heavy. I got this because my old case was poorly ventilated, the temps have dropped about 8 degrees Celsius, I even tried to get it to get it hot running all the graphics I could and it never went much above 45 C.

The Wife Gets A New Computer

My wife picked this case out for herself its an NZXT Apollo I really liked it, its very well built and everything lined up perfect. I have an Asus Mother Board 2 gb of ram and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 CPU set up inside it. Under normal load its running about 41c- 42c. This is the system the big fan I posted about the other day was bought for. I really liked the front door on the case it is hinged very solid and has a magnetic latch it basically just feels well made unlike some cases I have worked on or had.

TOO COOL

I hope anyhow, I am getting all the stuff together for another build and i ordered an Ultra x-wind cpu cooler from Tiger direct.Well the fan shows up today, Holy SH*T I can put this thing in my window this summer when it gets hot! I read the reviews but nobody said it was 5" across guess I missed that in the product specs? I just hope it clears my ram.

It should cool fine given the size of it and the fact that the computer is only going to be used for light work and surfing. I will post a follow up next week and let you know how well it actually cools.