P4 3.2g Prescott suspected heat problems

I have no idea what the life span of a pentium chip is, but if it died in ten years instead of twelve, i doubt if i would notice. The chip itself is the best on the market, but the bios and fan sucks. Before i opened my big mouth i did an air flow smoke test (i work in quality control). The left hand side of the fan blows the thermal energy towards the rear fan that cuts in too late. The right hand side of the fan blows the thermal energy back against the flow of air, and back into the case. The throughout air flow then draws the heated air back across the fan, which, in turn, recycles it. The recycled thermal energy increases the pentium temperature by up to 10c to 15c, I made a simple fan change with one of the cheapest on the market (Arctic Cooling's Freezer 7), Put the fan control in to the hands of free third party software (Speedfan), and it lowered both case by 25c and cpu by 15c. Intel is probably the second biggest company in the world, after Microsoft. With a global profit in the billions, they have a test and research lab that is the best you can have. The bios is nothing more than a program, to say it wasn't tested to distruction would be foolish. To say that they never came up with a better and more effient fan would be foolish. The high temperature of the pentium is by design rather than a flaw. Don't get me wrong, it is a hot baby, but not that hot.


Because of the warrenty, a vast majority of major computer makers have to sell the pentium with the stock fan, or stockpile them. No warrenty will reduce sales to almost zero, so Joe Smuck on the street gets a hot one. Because of the lateness that the fan kicks in, he won't have a clue. If you do have a pentium that craps out within three years, you have to return BOTH fan and chip, or the warrenty is invalid. I always keep ten fans back, just in case. I've never needed them, but you never know.

The chip is outstandingly good, the hyperthreading is brilliant, the PCI Express is unbeatable, but that's all.

 

Interesting!

 

If I may add ONE thing. The power fan on the Antec Aria is in fact thermally controlled. I've got one of these, and even after the computer ran for an hour, MBM only reported a fan speed of only 1200 RPM. I'm not sure if this is a defect, or merely an element of design, for noise reduction purposes.

However, there is a fix for this. Open the power supply (take the usual precautions, please), disconnect the fan from the controller, and solder that bitch to a 12v lead. After doing so, MBM now reports 2700 RPM, and my CPU (Athlon XP 2800+) temps dropped from 66 °C, to 56 °C. Ten degrees has made the difference between being able to run KOTOR for hours at a time, and not being able to run for more than ten minutes.

All the extra heat generated by the CPU just floats right on over to the same place the video card sits, and makes bad things happen. I've since made other modifications to the case (extra fans, wire management tricks, etc.), and have brought my temps down even further.

Just a heads up.

One thing that still bothers me, is that I have to use the Slim Volcano, as opposed to something taller, better, quieter... the power supply placement is somewhat less than optimal.

Oh, and salutations, all.

 

Oh, and holy crap, my first reply here regarding the Aria case somehow got moved here after I logged in.

What. A. Douchnozzle.

Sorry, fellas.

My hello still stands here just the same.