I can't understand how a passive cooler that keeps the VGA at 55c idle would dump the same amount of heat inside the case as a active cooler that keeps the VGA at 37c. *confused* The amount of heat dumped into the case is equal the power consumed by the device, which depends only on how much it is ...

Bluefront, you're getting sloppy... I think you forgot

Welcome to SPCR!

May your stay be an *almost* infinitely-long one.

There's a new (?) book out from O'Reilly called Building the Perfect PC . The many companies' logos are visible on the cover, so there are some doubts to the objectivity of some things. Anyway, the foreword and first chapter are available for free online here . The first chapter contains a several-p...

No, the idea of putting the coolest air through the hottest component first is absolutely a good idea. With modest airflow (say 10 CFM), the air going through the CPU HS will be heated by the HS by approximately five degrees (no, I didn't calculate it), but the CPU HS (and thus CPU) will gain more ...

I'm going to have to call BS on the idea that a "reversible" computer wouldn't produce any waste heat. The theory in the first post of this thread seems to have taken the thermodynamic statement that a reversible process wastes no energy and applied it to information. That statement only applies to ...

burcakb wrote:That was one mod (NB47J on a 9600XT) that data said should be possible but if I'm not mistaken you're the first one to go ahead and do it.

Yeah. I did the exact same thing to my 9600pro a few months ago. It's a wonderful idea, and the 9600 series are great cards for silent implementations.

I use an apple pro keyboard - not the new white ones, the very first (black) one that they made, and I really love it as a great keyboard all around. It's not totally silent, but it certainly doesn't make the clicky racket of most PC keyboards. The windows key and alt key are reversed, but that can ...

I'm a big fan of using double-sided foam tape to soft-mount fans. Cut four pieces to go on each corner, and cut out the curved edge with an exacto knife/razor blade.

I have the SX635B (older version), but I got it from a system builder and it never had a stock PSU, so I can't answer most of your questions. Airflow-wise, the front intake is pretty horrible. I made some serious modifications to mine - removed the drive cage and the support beneath it, cut a massiv...

the zalman coolers made for the northbridge would probably work well, it would take up a few pci slots though hehe. That's what I have on my 9600pro. Specifically, the blue one that zalman makes. It does eat up PCI space, but I don't need it anyway. Works like a dream - no artifacting whatsoever, b...

And would there be any performance difference between a 2.4c overcloced to 2.8c vs. stock 2.8c? Which is more important, fsb bandwidth or overall GHz speed rating? Clock for clock, core for core, cache for cache, equals same performance. The FSB is an interesting question though. A 2.4 overclocked ...

The reviewer seems almost happy to have found a heatsink that broke both of the two motherboards it was tested on.

Yay, it beats the SLK-900. You'll need a new motherboard every few months, but it's worth it for a drop of 2 degrees C.

Thermaltake up to its old tricks again.

Make sure that processor is a Northwood, not Prescott (is that what the C in 3.0C means?). Also, if you plan to do any overclocking, you'll want a nicer board than the Intel one. I recommend the Asus P4P800 series.

shathal wrote:Noticed a Spelling mistake thought - page 1.

Bolded for emphasis.

I nominate shathal for the post-of-the-week award.

Why doesn't Zalman do that already?

If I were to design the reserator, I would certainly carry the incoming hot water to the top in a skinny tube that has its own heatsink fins, but is thermally isolated from the cold-water reservoir and its fins.

Dos_Junkie wrote:question: will the zalman AlCu fit the p4p800-e Deluxe?

It will clear the motherboard bracket and components (capacitors, RAM, etc), you just have to make sure that it clears the power supply in your case, because the socket is pretty close to the top of the MB.

I've got a papst 3412N/2GL on my 900U, which I got from sillicon acoustics (expensive!). I think it's pretty quiet, but there's really no way to compare my standards to yours.

PCI express is the next expansion card technology that will soon start replacing AGP 8x. You can read all about it at Tom's Hardware.

If you read that whitepaper, you'll see that they arrive at the conclusion that there is no performance hit in most applications, and no significant additional wear and tear.

Raising your HD's temp by 5C will have much more impact on its lifetime than suspending it, if done properly and securely.

My ATI 9600 pro is currently cooled by a Zalman northbridge heatsink, mounted using it's through-the-board spring-loaded arms and some ceramique. I have an 80mm L1A pointed at the GPU heatsink, which is ducted from the front over my HDD. It's connected to a 5v/12v switch - I up the voltage to 12v wh...

It's also a good idea to make sure that extra thermal goop on the gpu block isn't shorting things out anywhere else on the card. That happened to me after changing the heatsink on my 9600p, and it worked fine after I cleaned it up a little.

If you like dremels, try a roto-zip (I think roto-zip is an actual brand name, but maybe not). A roto-zip is like a jet dremel.

Welcome to SPCR! If you do some searching, you'll see that this has been discussed several times before. Off the top of my head, I recall that the place to put HDD sinks for best heat dissipation is along the sides, rather than on top and bottom. Unless you've got some really fiery drives and/or ba...

I don't think you can really take the fan out without cutting the top half of the bracket. The hub itself is mounted directly to the frame. You could simply unplug the fan and let it sit there, but then there's no real good way to attach another fan (I assume you have an 80mm in mind).

I'm going ahead with my plan to stick a ZM-NB47J on my vanilla 9600 pro. After pulling the stock HSF off of the card, I was surprised to find how puny this thing is. The heatisnk is a single metal plate, with 1 row of pins going around its perimeter. The fan is truly tiny, and the whole thing was a ...

It is also possible that the fan in question does not have RPM monitoring, even if it does have 3 wires. What are the manufacturer and model of the fan?

I have a P4P800-DX, which ought to be similar to your P4C, and all three fan monitoring headers work fine inside Asus PC Probe.

OR, buy SATA drives from now on -- this is the major big improvement with SATA 150, other than the small (if any) speed increase...the data flows *serially* so there is no timing issues in this sense, with SATA cables. :twisted: This is something that I find odd - when talking about drives, SATA is...

I'd like to try or see the biggest passive passive northbridge heatsink available on a video card, like something that's at least 80g with a full 4cmx4cm base. I completely agree - enlarge an NB47-J a bit, and replace aluminum with copper until you reach about 120g, and I'd be a happy camper. The b...

Thanks for the answers everybody - i'm getting a good idea of how much (or how little!) cooling the 9600p needs.

I'm going to try slapping the Zalman NB heatsink on it this weekend and see how it does. Sounds like it's not been done before, and I'm as good a guinea pig as any.

Check these threads out:

Dangers of HD mounting

Suspended hard drives and reliability

The last post in the first of those threads has links to even more threads, and the second thread has a link to a somewhat relevant Seagate whitepaper.

Also check out: this.