The Sound of silence( cool computers)

[B00tDisk]

Meh.  I like that "J79 at full afterburner" sound of my case and heatsink (and GPU and HD) fans going but I'm weird.

'Sides, they're usually drowned out by music or game sound effects!

[B00tDisk]

I'm not sure if this is done in Europe, but in the US (canada as well?) there's a "Traveling computer show" that most folks who have an e-business selling computers or computer parts attend and buy booths at.  It's year-round, and there's usually one show a month here in Orlando (redrumloa and a few others probably know about 'em - Marketpro shows).  Anyway, it's a good place to pick up cheap computer parts (I grabbed three 9 gig 7200RPM SCSI UW drives to throw into my video editing box for a paltry $15 each!).

ANYway, the point being is that I recall one vendor who had a few heatsinks set up on display, hooked to a power supply, but with no CPU underneath.

On the underside of each heatsink frost had formed, and yes, Virginia, if you stuck your finger to it and held it there your fingertip would freeze onto the HS!

They were, IIRC, "golden orb" fan/hs combos.

Anyway, there was a point to this...ah well

[B00tDisk]

that_punk_guy wrote:
My old Compaq PIII-600 was brilliant. The PSU made no sound, there was a heatsink over the P3 cartridge and a nice big fan (so quiet I didn't even know it was there until a couple of days ago!) at the front to cool the CPU.

Compaq's Presario desktop PII systems (Slot1) didn't even have a CPU fan - just an aluminium heat sink the size of a PopTart (about 4x6 inches) that was directly in line for airflow from the front of the case to the power supply - that is, air was sucked in the front by the PS fan and blown out the back, and along the way passed over the CPU-HS.

Horrible systems overall though; they finally (?) abandoned the whole PCI-slots-on-riser-card with the later Presario desktops and just stuck the slots on the MB (900mhz and up).  I'm talking about the systems they provided for businesses, now, not home systems.  Never touched a non-business Compaq...

[B00tDisk]

Floid wrote:

B00tDisk wrote:
On the underside of each heatsink frost had formed, and yes, Virginia, if you stuck your finger to it and held it there your fingertip would freeze onto the HS!

Those were likely using Peltier elements.

Nope.  These were fan/heatsink combos.  No peltier coolers to be seen.  The boxes for the particular ones were simple "generic" Taiwanese cardboard boxes with no mention of Peltier cooling.  Although he did have some of those, IIRC.

 3.  It's making frost.  

Well, the HS was just sitting on the table, "business side" up.  This is in Florida, there's humidity all the time here, even when there's not.

[B00tDisk]

Floid wrote:
This was standard operating procedure for just about any slot-CPU system made by an OEM.  (I'm not sure if any 'passive' Slot-A Athlons were ever shipped; common for the Intel camp, anyway.)  All was not roses, though, as some chips/OEM designs shipped with undermassed heatsinks and fans that weren't up to the task- bad enough on a desktop, but imagine a lab of machines that'd all flake out as ambient temperatures varied.  (This garnered specifically from a Slashdot post I read a while back from someone fed up with their specific Compaqs, yes.  It's not hard to imagine.)

Thank you, Deskpros.  It's not like I worked on them for three years or anything :roll:.  I swear I must be getting senile.

Anyway, the big huge problem we had with them was end-users trying to treat them like towers by putting them under their desks on their sides.

Problem: The HS was heavy enough to gradually drag the CPU out of the horizontally mounted socket; the system was never intended to be put this way.  Convincing the end users otherwise was a royal pain in the ass.  

Believe it or not, the riser design is a standard - NLX or LPX, I forget which.    Risers would be great if the way they bolt them down didn't negate all the advantages.

LPX.  The riser cards were just something else to break, and break they did...hate 'em.

After working with those for a while, you do develop something of a fetish for Torx screws.  (Gotta love the way they provide spares!)

Yeah, I always thought that was "polite" of them.  The later Deskpro TORX screws were dual-slotted; you could either use a flathead screwdriver or a Torx screw.  Did you acquire a "Compaq Tool"?  (Multihead screwdriver with a bajillion different sized Torx, flat, and Phillips heads).