Things that go bump in the night usually don't give me concern since an old house like this makes plenty of them cooling down after the central heating has switched off.
4am this morning was different, however, since that nasty bump and the clanking, grinding sound that followed it had me leaping out of bed to turn off the 'puter.
With the light on, it was hard to miss my Xigmatek HDT-S1283 loose from it's mooring and leaning against the inside of the side panel window, sitting on the graphics card.
Inspection with a torch showed that one of the lugs on the plastic heatsink retention frame had broken off.
Fortunately there was a fairly local computer fair on today ("The Biggest In The South East") where I would probably be able to pick something up at only a few quid above the best online prices.
Looking for something that utilised it's own retention system, the Coolermaster Hyper Z600 could be mine for a mere £45... and was, merely because it was the only one there that didn't use stock retention. It's a bit showy for my tastes but if it does a good job, I won't complain.
The Antec Nine Hundred is a beautiful case to my eyes and is huge on the outside but internally could do with a little more breathing space around the ATX mobo. I certainly cursed it some while removing the board sufficiently for heatsink installation. A large hole in the motherboard tray roughly where the CPU sits would have been a Godsend!
Not, though, as much as I cursed Coolermaster for their piss-poor instruction leaflet and paste that slid off the CPU but stuck like glue to my fingers. I could only smear the thinnest film on both CPU and mounting block - so thin I could still clearly see the specs printed on the CPU, through a slight misting of compound. And I used the whole damned tube getting that on.
All the reviews I have seen for the Z600 have stated that it's big and you need a large case but it's no taller than the Xigmatek, just a lot fatter.
I still can't mount a fan on the side panel.
Performance doesn't seem to be affected by the amount of compound so I must have managed to get enough on to do the job - EVEREST reports 53 & 49 for the cores while CPU Folding at idle.
Interestingly, FrostyTech rates both these coolers in it's top 10 for Intel. I bought both while blind to their performance and online reviews. Lucky me.
I have some hastily taken pics that I might post once it's all back together.
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Originally Posted by clocker
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