Thursday, June 24, 2010

Vroom!

10:12 PM / Technology / Comments4 Comments

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Out of the blue, a replacement for my faulty motherboard arrived by courier this afternoon... and, an hour or so later, I was up and running with my new system in my new case. I wonder what was wrong with the previous motherboard. The supplier provided no explanation at all - just a new board in the same box I sent back to them.

It's a very nice case, with more fans than you can shake a stick at and greatly improved ventilation compared to my previous case. The net result is that all my components run significantly cooler than they did before, particularly the hard drives, where I've seen a drop of nearly 20 degrees Celsius, thanks to the whopping big 230 mm fan at the front of the case blowing cool air over them. Because of the increased ventilation and number of fans, more noise does end up escaping, but at the same time, the fact that everything is running much cooler means that the noisy video card fan (always the loudest part of the system) doesn't have to work anything like as hard when playing games, so the overall result is a quieter system... and one that will hopefully enjoy a longer life expectancy too.

So yeah, I'm extremely relieved everything went to plan this time. I was dreading plugging in the new board only to find out that the problem lay elsewhere. I should be getting a replacement for my dying laptop hard drive within the next couple of days too.

What I should be using right now.

 
4 Comments

1. Daniel Joseph Sardella said:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents

Amen.

(Posted on Friday, June 25, 2010 at 12:18 AM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Bill Hunt speaks the truth.

(Posted on Friday, June 25, 2010 at 12:24 AM)

3. FoxyMulder said:

I don't always agree with Bill Hunt but he got it spot on.

Those extra features usually provided on blu ray are a joke, lets have new HD transfers and spend te money on new commentaries, i'll even enjoy a proper full on documentary/making of feature if it's as good as the one on the Gone With The Wind disc.

Gee most studio's these days are not even providing a bog standard full HD trailer of the movie.

As for digital copies and DVD editions of the film, oh screw all that, i guess it's fine for those who want to entertain the kids in the car with a DVD edition while also buying the HD version but frankly it just has no interest for me.

(Posted on Friday, June 25, 2010 at 12:50 AM)

4. Graham M said:

Congrats on getting the new PC back up and running. You might want to consider replacing the fan on the side with 4 Xigmatek XLF fans. Pretty quiet and even better cooling.

Also, if the fan on the side is an intake I would suggest cutting up a pair of stockings (yeah, have fun buying them in a store!) and creating a DIY air filter for the side as that fan is going to intake a LOT of dust.

I benchmarked by PCs temps and HD. 12 degrees idle and 45 degrees at load using Prime95. Hard drive is 165Mb/s according to HD Tune.

(Posted on Friday, June 25, 2010 at 7:27 PM)

 
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