Cooling IT

As frequencies increase again for multicore CPUs from both Intel and AMD the importance of a good, efficient cooler becomes even more important. Though so called 'stock' air fan coolers that are supplied with the retail versions of modern CPUs are sufficient in cooling their associated CPUs at normal conditions, they are not the quietest or best cooling that can be used if you want to either overclock your processor or build an almost silent system.

I was confronted with both conditions for two different systems recently, one based on an AMD processor and the other an Intel, so I decided to investigate the technology of CPU cooling. There are definitely some weird and wonderful solutions out there including gas and water-based cooling for more money than you would pay for the processor itself. However in the more realistic world of air cooling fans the name of Zaalman was considered the best, but I could not bring myself to purchase beautiful copper cooling solutions for £50 or more when the price of the CPUs they were to cool were not that much more money.

In the region of £15 to £20 the name of Arctic Cooling came to the front, so I purchased one of these to try. I was amazed how much cooler and quieter the Intel system was! I quickly purchased the AMD version of the Arctic Cooler Freezer aluminium cooler. These seem the optimum price/performance solution as the CPU temperature and noise level dropped considerably when they were installed. Thoroughly recommended!

Finished Space Siege

I've just finished Space Siege. It was a simple and fun game and I did kind of enjoy it but not as much as Dungeon Siege which had more depth and variety.

I only paid £5 for it from GAME's bargain bin so it was really good value for money. I've just bought Dawn of War 2 so I'll probably start that straight away. It is a bit in the same vein though. I'd prefer a good first person shooter so I might try Fallout 3 or Call of Duty 5 which I hear are worthwhile.

DELL's new Inspiron 545/546

I'm disappointed in DELL's new Inspiron 545/546 range of desktops, colourful though they maybe. The Intel-based 545 uses the older G33 chipset with the Intel GMA 3100 graphics, whilst the Vostro 220 uses the newer G45 with higher specification Intel GMA X4500 graphics.

On the AMD-based 546 range wich starts at a lowly Sempron LE1250 CPU and expensively rises to the previous generation Phenom quad processors. What happenned to the great Phenom II CPUs?

It is great to see a range of coloured fronts but all are a £29 option on the standard black. It is a pity the rest of the case isn't coloured at that price. And the colour choice is limited to the 545 only. Why?

An obvious market for a coloured case would be the value gaming market, yet no suitable jaw dropping CPU and graphics combination is possible. The Intel Quad Core Q8200 and ATI Radeon HD3650 256MB graphics card is the expensive top-of-the-range model, which don't even make it to the entry level of the XPS range. The Vostro 220 also offers a RAID 0 (striped) disk capability as well.

In general on paper a poor addition to the product offering from DELL, who have now officially dropped to number two in the US market behind HP.

AMD Cool'n'Quiet Technology

The new configuration of my large purple PC was warm and noisy. To start with I replaced the old, cheap and noisy case fans with Xilence Red Wing ones which seem to shift a lot more air and are quieter too. This helped but did not result in a noise level I desired.

I was considering replacing the stock CPU cooler, then turned on the Cool'n'Quiet BIOS setting for the AMD Phenom II X3 720 CPU. This also made a noticeable difference. mMore than I thought that it would. At idle the CPU speed dropped from its overclocked 3.2Ghz to 2.1Ghz to 800MHz. The CPU fan slowed from over 5,100rpm to 3,400rpm and was a fair bit quieter.

This Cool'n'Quiet technology seems very dynamic, much more so that Intel's SpeedStep and doesn't seem to affect the responsiveness of the system at all. When you want the play games the system goes to full speed and becomes noisier but the game's sound blocks this out. When you just type it is quiet enough. I might still change the CPU cooling fan at a later date, but the Cool'n'Quiet technology is sufficient for me now.

Port 80 blocked

I recently went to a customer who claimed that he couldn't view web pages and yet email and messaging worked as usual. I thought that it just meant that I had to reset the web browser's security (Internet Explorer) and check for proxy servers, etc. However it still didn't work. Other computers on the router worked well, so it wasn't that. I spent two hours checking every thing such as reset Winsock settings (netsh winsock reset), checking the hosts file, etc.

I searched the web for clues but found none, though I did download and ran a couple of network repair utilities such as LSPfix. Still no joy. I then performed a complete virus and spyware scan. That revealed evidence and removed Trojan.MeSPAM but still didn't fix web browsing. It was looking like a Windows reinstall was required which seemed over-the-top for such a small, but vital problem.

It was definitely TCP/IP HTTP port 80 that was being blocked. DNS servers were OK and resolving. Other nework access was fine. The AVG AntiVirus was not updating, but I believe that was also based on port 80. Booting into Safe mode and web browsing was fine. I searched for dormant firewalls and other strange services but found none.

As a final desperate act, I removed all the software applications that had anything to do with web browsing or the network such as; Flash, Shockwave, MSN Messenger, Yahoo messenger, ICQ, MSN Family Safety and all the other MSN applets, AVG AntiVirus, etc. Reboot and web browsing is fine.

Reloaded all the stuff apart from MSN Family Safety which the customer didn't require and surfing the web continued to be fine. Update to Internet Explorer 8. Still OK. So what was the problem?

Going Black continued

The new CPU and motherboard are installed in the giant purple case and running well. The main problems were fitting all the devices and cables into the large case. It is still a tight fit.

The MSI K9A2 Neo-F AM2+ motherboard is great. It allows me to use my old Enermax 650W power supply to connect with a 20 pin connection into the newer 24 pin motherboard. Even the manual says that you can do this. It also POSTed first time with the new CPU and an easy BIOS upgrade with MSI's LiveUpdate program gives the correct AMD Phenom II X3 720 CPU name.

I loaded Windows Vista Home Premium and all the hardware was recognised. Even my Sil 0680 IDE RAID card! Then it was an easy job to gradually increase the CPU multiplier setting from 14X to 16X to reach my desired overclocking speed of 3.2Ghz. The system runs fine and I'm reloading my games and applications before benchmarking. I'm very happy with this upgrade.

Going Black

Even after my December post, I've decided to rebuild an old DIY computer as my next gaming system. At present I use an 18 month old DELL Inspiron 530 with Intel C2D E6550 2.33Ghz and 3Gb PC5300 memory. I want a noticeable performance improvement going up into the 3Ghz CPU range plus overclocking capabilities.

Also, though quad core processors are the high end CPU of today, I've sold a few Intel C2Q Q6600 and Q8200-based systems for gaming and I've never been totally impressed with the response times, even though more modern games are multiprocessor compatible. As always, cost is an issue, and needs to be kept as low as possible. Obvious candidates were Intel C2D E8400 and Q8X00, Q9X00 and Core i7 together with the new AMD Phenom II X4 CPUs. However I've decided on the triple core AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition for the following reasons:

• a modern true 2.8Ghz multicore processor
• 45nm fabrication leading to lower power (95W) and temperatures
• unlocked multiplier; easier to overclock without stressing memory and graphics
• the AM3 socket format giving an upgrade path to DDR3 memory
• that extra core processor
• the under £120 low price

I've also bought an MSI K9A2 Neo-F AM2+ motherboard for £60. This is an ATX format, compatible with the Phenom II CPUs and offering four DDR2 memory slots and no integrated graphics. This gives me RAM configuration flexibility as well as RAID storage and I will be transferring my XFX overclocked nVidia 9600GSO graphics card.

This will all be assembled into my very large, metallic purple Cheiftec case with existing quality PSU, DVD drives and a new WD 500Gb SATA2 hard disk drive. This presently houses an AMD Duron 1.8Ghz CPU and Abit NF7 motherboard.

I'm looking forward to receiving my new CPU and motherboard later this week. I'll let you know how I get on with them.