I Got My New Fans Today...

[lynx]

...but they don't fit onto the cpu. :(

Too near the power supply.

The case on my linux machine is simply too small altogether, and in any case because of the location of the PS it is only rated for processors up to XP2000.

The only other case I have at the moment is the one I've got for a friend, who want's an upgrade. It would fit into that one nicely.

I can't give him my big case, it is obviously 2 years old, and I'm upgrading him to an XP2400 so I can't put his upgrade into my small case (which is only 2 weeks old). Or at least I can't unless I mod it. And he said he wanted a small case anyway.

That was the situation at 4pm this afternoon.

Since then I've removed the PS, taken the connectors off the back and added some mains cable. Then I've resited the PS at the bottom front of the machine. The fan grill there exactly matches the position of the PS fan (which I've reversed). And I've run the mains cable round the edge of the case back to the position of the original connector.

One of my concerns was that the moving the PS to the front could cause me some vibration noise. I've solved that problem with a little foam draught excluder. The PS is now rock solid in it's new position but not actually touching the front panel.

I've cut the back panel off a dud power supply which gives me the new mains connector and a switch, and a mounting panel for another fan. All I've got to do now is connect the mains cable to the switch and input connector and fit a fan and I'm finished.

My first attempt at case modding and everything seems to have gone very smoothly. Tomorrow I can finish building his machine, and start on the task of fitting my mobo into my new case. The new Evercool fans are rated at 79CFM at 2000rpm, max noise under 30dbA so hopefully I will be able to hear things s little better tomorrow. And I can put the cover back on too.

And then I can try overclocking just a little more. :D

And don't ask for pictures, I haven't even got an ordinary camera never mind a digital one. :P

[bigdawgfoxx]

Hmm I a little confused..what kind of CPU did you buy? 2500XP..right?

What kind of new cooler did you buy?

I would have just bought some cheap $40 dollar case prob if my stuff didnt fit.

And you bought a new cooler that only supports up to a 2000XP?

I really dont know whats going on exactly haha

[clocker]

Congratulations Lynx.

"Necessity IS the mother of invention" after all, eh?

A clever solution to a vexing problem.
Your temp situation will be of interest.
Now that you've opened up the headroom over the HSF, it should be easier to move air in and out of the area.
At least, I found that to be the case.

Keep us posted, please.

[lynx]

Bigdawg, you seem to have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. :rolleyes:

Case 1, my current case, fan won't fit.
Case 2, my linux case (new), fan won't fit, case rated up to XP2000
Case 3, my friends case, fan will fit.

So case 3 will become my main pc, case 1 will become my linux pc, case 2 will become my friends pc. But I need to increase the rating of case 2 to accomodate my friends XP2400.

One final point, when making coffee and cereals for breakfast, the hot water goes in the coffee mug. :lol:

[clocker]

Originally posted by lynx@26 February 2004 - 02:57


One final point, when making coffee and cereals for breakfast, the hot water goes in the coffee mug. :lol:
Funny you should bring that up, Lynx.

I just OCed my coffeemaker.
I was able to increase the GPH by almost 30%, but due to hardware limitations I have to run my "coffee beans per gallon" asynchronously.

This has lead to instability in my taste benchmarks.

Any suggestions?

[lynx]

Stage one is now complete, the small case is now ready for it's motherboard. I tried using one of those soldering guns to fasten the cable to the back panel connector. It seemed to be alternately too hot or not hot enough. When It started smoking I decided to alternate it into the bin and went back to my trusty old Antec 12W iron.

I realised I had totally stuffed the power connector but fortunately I've got a few of those spare. If I do a job like this again I'll try to get one with spade connectors, but I couldn't get one at short notice. A tip if you are going to try this - push a power lead into the connector before soldering, otherwise the plastic tends to melt and the pins go out of alignment (that's what happened to the first one). Let it all cool down before you remove the lead or you run the risk of pulling the pins out with the lead.

The problem now is that I need the HSF from this machine before I can go any further with the small case, because there is no way to fit it once the mobo is in the case.

So stage 2 - moving my bits from the old case to the new large case - starts now. This means I won't have a working pc until I've completed that stage, something that hasn't happened for quite some time.

It is now 13:30, let's see how long it takes me.

Bye for now, and keep that coffee boiling.

[lynx]

Everything was going fine until I came to install my HDD. Then I found the with the cooler it would not fit into the slot. Bad case design. But remember that cooling AND noise reduction are the aims, so I was not entirely unprepared. I had already bought some rubber washers with the intention of mounting my PS with them.

A little drilling soon enabled me to fit the HDD in a non-standard position, and it is rubber mounted too. (I can't hear the HDD at all now)

Temp is currently 42C cpu, 20C mobo at 100% cpu usage. Interestingly the mobo temp has actually risen, but I'm not sure if that's as a result of increased room temp, the new case, or heat from the cpu being blown onto the mobo. But at 20C I can't say I care. :lol:

The covers are still off for the moment for comparison with the old setup, and I've still got to mount my PS on rubber washers, but things are looking good. I'm not sure it is much quieter, but that may improve when I re-enable Q-Fan.

[_John_Lennon_]

Why exactly is the case rated to 2000+?

What kind of limitations would make all CPU's above this unsuitable again?

[lynx]

The case height was just enough to fit a full size atx board.

This meant that the power supply sat over the board, and in particular over the processor. There was no way that the fans could properly remove air heated by the processor so the system would have overheated.

I've now moved the PS to the bottom front of the case so that the processor is not obscured. The area on the rear panel where the PS used to be mounted now has an 80mm fan blowing air straight out, and it is just above the processor so it is about as efficient as it can be.

The fan in the PS was reversed so that it is blowing air into the case, so the whole thing should be fairly cool when it is all completed.

Unfortunately I've since discovered that either the mobo or the cpu is faulty, not running at the correct voltage, which has resulted in errors when processing Folding. There is no provision for adjustment with that mobo, so back to the supplier in the morning.

[tesco]

it sounds good, you said you dont have a camera for pictures so borrow one from a friend or family member then take pics of your case for us. i wanna see what youve done!

[lynx]

Took the board back first thing this morning (well almost first thing, it's crazy how a little bit of snow at the side of the road seems to freak so many people out).

They tested it and agreed that Vcore was indeed very low, so they replaced the board. They said they'd had a few problems with that board, that should have set alarm bells ringing, and I should have got them to test the new board.

Got home and assembled the system - I couldn't believe it, Vcore was even lower (1.53V when it should have been 1.65V). Needless to say, I took it straght back, but of course ran into the problem that the engineers were at lunch (out to lunch?).

I eventually got it looked at, and refused to have another of the same sort - an XFX NF24 (that's Nforce 2 400 to you and me). They had no problem with that, in fact they were going to suggest it themselves. But they are in the technical department and they aren't allowed to swap one part for a different make, so all they could do was give me a credit note. That's actually not true, I've done it before, but lunchtime staff. :rolleyes:

I then had to go through a door into the shop area, order a new board (Asus A7N8X-X), wait in the queue (it was lunchtime remember) for my order to be processed while in the background the board was picked from the warehouse, pay the 6 pence difference in price (which they wouldn't have bothered about if they had done it in the technical dept) and come home with my new board.

The new board is much better, I can run it at 12x166MHz instead of 15x133MHz, which means that the memory and I/O access is much better. If I needed to I could have adjusted Vcore, but it was reading bang on 1.65V. I was disappointed to find that it is only running in single channel mode, so I went to the Asus website to find out how to enable dual channel model And the simple answer is that I can't. The Nforce2 400 chip does not support dual channel mode.

So not only do XFX make crappy motherboards, they are also lying in their installation manual when they tell you to use slots A1 and B1 to enable dual channel mode. But then again they claim the board has Nforce2 SPP Northbridge chip but it doesn't It's no wonder I couldn't work out whether it was in dual channel mode before.

Ah well, at least it is working properly now. Just got to start the OS installation. And as soon as that's done it is going to my friends house, I'll be glad to see the back of it, so I'm sorry, no pictures.

[_John_Lennon_]

The A7N8X-X doesnt have dual channel? odd.

[lynx]

The Asus website refers to a "Nvidia bulletin". Reading between the lines I suspect everyone thought that the Nforce2 400 chip would support dual channel, but it doesn't, that's only the Nforce2 400 Ultra.

Other variants of the Nforce2 chipset seem to support dual channel, but not at DDR400 speeds. Confusing, isn't it?