As I write this, it's a balmy 6F outside (-14C). The wind is blowing the wind chill to as much as 26F below. (-32C).
Maybe I could make it feel warmer by thinking of 6F as a toasty 259 degrees on the Kelvin scale. Or, even better, 466 Rankins. Wow! Almost 500 degrees! Beach weather! Get out the flip flops!
The snowbanks here are well over head-high. We've (the condo association) had to hire a handyman who's on the roof right now, chipping away at ice dams that have caused leaks in some units here. (Not mine!)
None of which is a complaint. The deep-winter landscape is gorgeous outside, and inside it's still a comfy 98.6F down by my liver or spleen or something. In case you're wondering, that's 37C, 310K, 558R. You know what they say: Cold hands, warm liver.
I'm also almost at the end--- digging out--- from a long series of various incidents and adventures dating back to mid-December's ice storm and extended power outage.
For example, along the way, I've built or rebuilt 5 separate PCs. And by "built," I mean to the nuts-and-bolts level, like this (below), where I was removing a heat sink from a motherboard in order to get rid of the loudest, most-annoying chip fan I'd ever heard:
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/pcrepair_jan2009/coolingxsmall001.jpg
(Blogger is cropping the photos again grrrr)
How annoying, you ask? Like a mosquito an inch away from your ear, but one you can never swat away.
Here's the offending fan itself--- so small it had to spin incredibly fast, making it a tiny siren, continuously screaming inside the PC's case:
http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/flanga_bucket/pcrepair_jan2009/coolingxsmall014.jpg
God, the silence was wonderful after killing that hideous fan.
The photos above are two of many I took along the way. Two of the rebuilt PCs are Frankensteinian devices made entirely of parts cannibalized from other, older PCs. As I'm now digging out, I hope to bring you some of the more interesting tidbits, including how I destroyed a new motherboard.
It's all been... instructive. Yes, that's a nice, positive word: Instructive.
But I'll start on Monday with more photos from the ice storm itself. I'll also keep up with the usual stuff that finds itself into these pages. Hope you enjoy the mix of long, short, serious, silly and just plain weirdness coming your way. 8-)
Fred, I totally understand your weather woes. Here in NB (canada), we've also been dumped on and the temp has been too cold for my liking (I was wondering if this was Winnipeg!).
ReplyDeleteI am curious. What did you replace the fan with? What type of heatsink went in its place? I've got a similar woe with one of my boards and I wanted to remove the noisemakers too.
Stay tuned--- lots of pix coming. 8-)
ReplyDeleteBut the basic premise is simply to replace small high-speed fans with large slow speed ones. If you move a ton of air, but slowly and quietly, you can achieve the same or better cooling as with tiny, noisy high-speed spot-cooling fans.
My new system, with the fan mods I ended up with, is literally whisper quiet and yet runs cooler than with the noisy factory fans. (I carefully monitor system temps when I'm dorking with the fans.)
You don't *have* to put up with a PC that sounds like a hair dryer. 8-)
Again, stay tuned.
And I also apologize for the photos, which some of you saw as odd crops. Google owns Blogger, Google owns Photobucket. Blogger even uses a subset of Photobucket to store blogger-specific photos. But the main apps, Blogger and Photobucket, don't talk to each other very well.
It's odd and a little frustrating, but they're both free apps, so one can't complain very much.
hmmm I'll bet that's the reason my pc is so dang noisy...if I don't shut the thing down at night it can keep me awake. This in a lath and plaster 1925 brick bungalow. sigh
ReplyDelete"Enjoying" is a serious understatement. My day is not complete until I see what you are up to. You are a talented, wonderful writer, Fred. You are greatly admired.
ReplyDelete