Monday, September 29, 2008

PC Project - Stage 3 (Complete)

Hi all,

Finally, the longest and toughest part of the PC Project is done.

I have finished sanding and polishing the internals of my Coolermaster case.

I guess I had enough of polishing and it has been taking a tad too long... I feel that it is not that bad.. :)

I will take a while longer to finish the final assembly of the PC... Enjoy the polish case for now.. keke

Cheers,
Ken






Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Update on Stage 3 of PC Project.

Hi everyone,

I have working on Stage 3 of my PC project a bit at a time.

I am slowly making progress but its still quite a long way...

I shall let the pictures do the talking..

I actually made a few fan mountings on the casing but cutting holes on the case.

The below shows my unpolished Motherboard tray and the semi-polished Motherboard Tray.

Cheers,
Ken





Saturday, September 06, 2008

A new role. A new responsibility.

Hi all,

Time really waits for no man. I was having dinner with the engineering team in my company and I suddenly realised that I have joined this company for 2 yrs and 4 months. The team only started with 10 AEs when I joined and now we have 20!!!

The strength has doubled in a short 2 yrs. Of cos, ppl come and ppl leave but some of us have seen through thick and thin in this company; made good friendship along the way and still will be even with those who moved on. It's something that is hard to find in a competitive private world out there.

For me, I would be taking up a new role as a Marketing Engineer from 1st Oct. Of cos, it would come with new responsibilities but as of now, I do not really fully understand what lays install for me. But I take everything that comes with my best and take up the challenge to fulfil the set goals.

I am already starting to miss my team mates even though its a month away. But I am sure our bond will remain no matter where I go to...

Lets give it out best to make sure we get the best out of our careers...

Best Regards,
Ken

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

PC Overhaul - Stage 2 continued

Hello,

It is rather hard to find time to write everything down in one shot... that's why I have split the sections up... :)

Ok.. here it goes.. the continuation of Stage 2...

Back in the first part of Stage 2, I mentioned that I was not impressed with the cooling effects of the Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler. But I know that it is a great product so I wondered whether it was the way I used it that was giving me unimpressive results. Therefore, I went to think about how to improve the performance of the CPU cooler....

I know that the airflow of a cooler is very important to the performance of a heat sink. And I went to do a check on the Blue LED fan that I hv bought. The rate of flow is not very good; and thus limiting of amount air passing through the cooler... Hence I decided to change the fan to a much more powerful fan; but yet I want it to be controllable.... And so I went around shopping for one.

On top changing the fan, I was thinking of a better position to mount my CPU fan. From this thought process, I realised that it would be good to think of a complete and efficient airflow system for my setup. Hence, Stage 3 is planned for...

Back to Stage 2....

I finally decided to change the fan position from the current 'front mount suck in air' position to a 'rear mount suck out air' position. Below is how the changes look like.


* The original mounting method. By doing this, I found out that the amount of air that was suck in through the fan into the CPU cooler was limited and there is air 'escaping' from the side, thus being inefficient.


* The new mounthing method. The fan is now mounted at the rear end of the CPU cooler and in a sucking out position. Using this method, the fan is forcing air to be sucked through the CPU cooler from the front; and dumping the hot air that has passed through the CPU cooler from the rear.. And an interesting thing to note is that the fan is speed adjustable; I can turn it to silent which will be slower or highflow which is faster...

The new fan comes with a rather nice looking external fan controller mounting... but I hv not taken a photo of it yet... I will do that together with Stage 3... :)

And the results... I have posted them below... :)

(From the post below...)
Original cooler @ Stock Speed (2.66GHz)
Idle - 41 Deg C
Full Load - 55 Deg C

Original cooler @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 49 Deg C
Full Load - 59 Deg C

Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler with Blue-LED fan ~1200rpm @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 44 Deg C
Full Load - 55 Deg C

Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler with Silverstone fan (rear mount suck out - in quiet mode ~900rpm) @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 43 Deg C
Full Load - 54 Deg C

Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler with Silverstone fan (rear mount suck out - in full power mode ~2300rpm) @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 41 Deg C
Full Load - 52 Deg C

You can notice that even at a low speed of 900rpm, the Silverstone fan that I use is able to cool by 1 Deg C at idle. It may not sound like a lot but the fact is that by making small changes to the way the fan is mount and selecting an efficient fan, you can improve the efficiency of cooling.

When I crank the fan up to its full power, you can see that the temperature of the CPU dropped to 41 Deg C in idle. And that to me is impressive... And when the CPU is under going full load testing, the temperature max out at only 52 Deg C which was 3 Deg C less that the original cooler... I am now rather satisfied with the CPU cooler.

Moving on to the 2nd piece of hardware which requires better cooling as mentioned in the earlier post. The Graphics Card..

Its original heatsink was rather small and flat... This means that the manufacturer was able to keep the card to occupy the space of one slot on the Mainboard and yet keep it running without problems..

But when I stress testing the graphics card with its stock cooler using a3D benchmark software, I found that the temperature that my graphics card was giving out is scary... Below are some figures.

Powercolor HD4850 (stock cooler)
Idle - 82 Deg C
Stress Testing (Max temp recorded) - 93 Deg C

That is scarily hot. I told myself, something must be done to change this. So I went on the internet to find more reviews and came acros a name that kept appearing on forums. Its the Thermalright HR03-GT vga cooler. (I guess it was jus coincidence that both of my coolers are Thermalright's coolers).


*These are the photos from the original GPU cooler. The cooling 'ingredients' used seem to be too inefficient to bring the GPU temperature down.


*The above are photos of the Thermalright HR03 GT vga cooler. As you can see, the packaging is very good and complete. All it lacks is a fan. On Thermalright's website, it is said that the cooler is good enough even without a fan but I do not want to take my chances. There I tried to find a 92mm fan in my 'store'...

Here are some photos of the completed cooling project of Stage 2 for my CPU and graphics card...





The performance of the Thermalright HR03 GT was very impressive... It was simply amazing. I could not believe my eyes when I ran the graphics card monitoring program to check out my GPU's temperature. Below are the results

Powercolor HD4850 graphics card (Original Cooler)
Idle - 82 Deg C
Full Load Test - 93 Deg C

Powercolor HD4850 graphics card (Thermalright HR03 GT with fan)
Idle - 40 Deg C
Full Load Test - 58 Deg C

The temperature at idle dropped by more than half from the original. And the temperature at full load testing of my graphics card, the GPU only went up to 58 Deg C which is still a 35 Deg C drop from the original cooler. Impressive stuff.

Currently I am busy with work and maybe not have time to do up Stage 3 of the project (which would be the toughest bit)... But be sure that once it is done, I will post it online as soon as I can.

Best Regards,
Ken

Sunday, July 27, 2008

PC Overhaul - Stage 2

Hi everyone,

I am back as promised with an update on my PC Overhaul project.

Now I am at Stage 2 of this project. Initially, when I started this project, I knew I was going to split it into 3 stages; but now, I believe it would stretch to 4 stages. :P

Background on what I have been doing with my PC is below in Stage 1.

On with Stage 2...

When I first got the basic system up and running in Stage 1. I decided to do some light overclocking to my system setup. For those who doesn't know what overlocking means, it simply means making the PC faster than it actually is. There are tons of articles and online materials to learn about overclocking but I won't go into too much detail.

I have been playing with overclocking for quite a number of years. It has been a personal hobby of mine and I think it is a form of art. The key to have a successfully overclocked and stable system that can last is to select the right components that can do the job at the intended speed.

At Stage 1, you can see that I have named several brands of different component makers that are out there. These are some of the trusted brands in the business; and of cos there are a lot other brands out there for the job, all you need is to spend some time at the forums.

My choices are based on my personal liking and experiences.

So back to my system. Originally, the CPU is suppose to run at 2.66GHz as stated on the package. But normally, Intel's CPU are good for at least 1GHz higher than their quote speed. Therefore, it is entirely possible to run the CPU at 3.66GHz or even more. The downside of doing this is obviously that the warranty will be voided and the life of the CPU will be shorten.

But I still decide to overclock my system to be a tad faster than its stated speed. I will spare you the nitty gritty details on the tweaking and tuning portions. But I fixed my CPU to run at a speed of 3.2GHz.

3.2GHz - 2.66GHz = 540MHz speed increase.

*In the overclocking world, this is a very small increase. But nonetheless, I decided to keep it as that as I am going to run my system 24/7 without shutting down and would not want to overstress my system.

Hmm.. at this point you may be wondering what's so special about stage 2 then... Just to give you an idea. When a CPU is being overclocked, the heat that is generated increases due to the increase in power consumption.

Therefore, stage 2 is a crucial stage... It is how I cool my system down...

Firstly, I would like to mention that there are 2 hardware in my system that requires improved cooling. The obvious one would be my CPU which has been overclocked.

Secondly, the next hardware to cool is my graphics card. It is running at around 82 Deg C even at idle and going up to a insane 93 Deg C when I was fully load testing the graphics card!!!! Even though, the manufacturer claims it is perfectly alright and no damage would be done to the card even at these temps, I do not believe so. At 90+ Deg C, we could cook at egg with it. Obviously, I can't just leave it alone.. :)

Lets start with the CPU cooling...

When the CPU is running at original speed with its original cooler, it was rather cool. Running at around 41 Deg C (from Mainboard CPU sensor) at idle and a maximum of near 55 Deg C when running fully loaded. However, with the original cooler, running at the overclocked speed, the temperature shot up to around 49 Deg C at idle and 59 Deg C when fully loaded.

Though the increase from 55 to 59 Deg C does not seem significant, it is important to keep your CPU as cool as you can even when its fully loaded. Thus something has to be done to lower the temperature from the CPU. This means trying to spread the heat from the CPU away faster...

This means replacing the original cooler with a more efficient one. For this, I chose to use the Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler. The reviews on this coolers over the world has been great and therefore I decided to give it a try myself.

So on with the cooling project in this stage 2...

Some photos of the Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler.




For your information, this cooler is huge... Standing at around 200mm tall, 140mm wide and 50mm thick, it is one of the biggest CPU coolers I have come across... But also notice that the company does provide very good packaging and all essential items.. A thoughtful company I must say...

Here are some pictures of my original cooler system of the CPU and graphics card.

* I was doing my tests on this original system setup. And with this setup, that was how I got the temperature readings...


And so.... after a certain amount of time, removing the original CPU cooler and fixing the new one in... Here are some photos of the newly mounted Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler in action with a Blue-LED fan sucking into the cooler.




With the new Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler mount, I began to do some CPU loading test on my system. The sames I did when my original cooler was in my system.

I ran the CPU stress test and monitored my CPU temperature to find the Minimum and Maximum temperature when my system was either at idle or full load.

And below are the results...

Original cooler @ Stock Speed (2.66GHz)
Idle - 41 Deg C
Full Load - 55 Deg C

Original cooler @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 49 Deg C
Full Load - 59 Deg C

Thermalright 120 eXtreme CPU cooler with Blue-LED fan @ Overclocked Speed (3.2GHz)
Idle - 44 Deg C
Full Load - 55 Deg C

As you can see, the results are not too shabby... With the CPU at Overclocked Speed, I am able to get it to be running at a temperature when it was at Stock Speed....

The Thermalright CPU cooler certainly helped cooled the CPU down. But frankly, I wasn't very impressed as I had expected more from this product. Therefore, I started asking myself 'did I do something wrong? Or did I not do something?' as I feel that the CPU cooler is under-performing.

And I went back to the drawing board and the internet to look for an answer to my question...

keke... Stage 2 will be continued...

Stay tuned...

Best Regards,
Ken

Sunday, July 20, 2008

PC Overhaul - Stage 1

Hi everyone,

Its been a really long time since I last update my blog. Anyhow, I am back... :)

Recently, I have decided to upgrade my own PC as I was building one for my gf... Surprisingly, hers is about as old as mine (In terms of the core system).

Its then that I realised that I have not lost the PC geekiness in me... haha... I am still every bit as in love with PCs as I was when I was younger... Btw, my core system is about 5 yrs old... so its also about time...

I started reading up on the forums I use to go to for ideas and recommendations. And soon discovered that I was still able to keep up to date with the technologies rather quickly to find out the best value for money/performance system...

For your info, usually the best value isn't the cheapest but it would be a PC that will give the PC enthusiast the bang for their buck.

Ok... Lets give my system a good introduction... hehe... Lets talk about the old stuff first and those that I decided to change and keep...

Parts that I kept
Casing
- CoolerMaster Praetorian PAC-T01 Chassis (First appeared in 1999 (~$600) and I waited 5 yrs before I actually bought one (~$200)... For cost reasons... )
Drives
- WD Raptor 10k RPM 74GB
- Maxtor DiamondMax 10 7.2k RPM 160GB x 2
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB (IDE, very very old drive)
- BenQ DVD writer (can't be bother with the specs for this one) but works fine

Parts that are to be replaced
Motherboard
- Asus P4P-800
CPU
- Intel P4 2.4C (OC to 2.8)
RAM
- Patriot DDR 400 512MB x2
Power Supply
- SilverStone 500W PSU (Very good unit but sadly cannot be used in the new one)


NEW Parts going in
Motherboard
- Asus P5Q-E (Avid followers of Asus: This board does not disappoint and it sure lives up to it name of being a very complete Motherboard for PC enthusiasts. Its not the most 'high-end' board but the board with almost everything you need.)
CPU
- Intel Core2Duo E8200 (2.66Ghz , L2 6MB)
Ram
- Cosair XMS2 DDR2-800 Matched Pair (1GB x 2)
Power Supply
- SilverStone ST75ZF Zeus 750W PSU (One quiet Power Monster)
Add-on Cards
- Leadtek Winfast TV2000 Xpert

When I got my parts back home and really had a good look at my PC, I realised that it really collected a lot of dust and dirt for the past 4 yrs I last touched it.. It was so scary that I decided to do a PC Overhaul before putting anything new things in. So I began my PC overhaul project, removing all the old parts from the chassis and dusting and wiping them clean. Once all the parts are removed, I set to work on cleaning my chassis inside out. It took me ard 5 hours to clean everything (from removing covers, grills and internal fans; to cleaning the grills where the air intake is, cleaning the filter mesh on the front and top of the chassis, cleaning all the fans that are present (all 4 of them) one by one.) But the end result is just fantastic, seeing your chassis like new is a good feeling...

Okay... So now its time to get the new parts in... The core system went in first... together with one HDD that I was going to use as the boot drive and the DVD drive.... obviously to install Windows.. The reason for doing so is..... you see this is Stage 1.... So there is more stages to come in this project... :) Will update soon in due time.... In the meantime, some photos for enjoyment.. hehe