Quad Core processor generates slightly more heat than I expected, so I had to increase the speed of the 12cm fan in the PSU and added another 12cm fan
to the top-front of the case, also pulling out hot air at medium speed (7V instead of 12V).Looking through my PC parts, fans and circuit boards I found an old fan controller, which I salvaged from a power supply a long time ago.
The green electric component is a temperature sensor, the wired plug goes into a fan header and the fan you want to control connects to the plug on the circuit board.
In my PC the fan on the CPU is PWM controlled
, so I left it they way it was, and I connected the two 12cm fans to the controller and put the temperature sensor on the CPU's heat sink, as that's the biggest heat generator in the case.The result was excellent. When in IDLE or light CPU usage, the big fans are virtually inaudible, but as soon as the CPU goes up to 50*C they start pumping out the warm air, so the CPU never goes beyond 57*C, not even in this heat (28*C ambient).
My next step will be to replace the crappy power supply, which adds significant inefficiency and heat to the system, as it reaches 72% efficiency only when under 50% load. At 25% and 75% load it's more like 60% efficient...
I've identified two candidates, which should do the job well:
- Inter-Tech SL-500 PLUS 500W, rated at 90.2% efficiency, but costing 118RON (30USD)
- Tecnoware FAL525FS12 520W, rated at 86% efficiency, costing only 60RON (15USD)
Both seem good choices, as Inter-Tech is a German brand and Tecnoware is Italian, but they seem a little too cheap for the efficiency they promise. On the other hand I don't need more than 200W and it'll be connected to a good UPS all the time, so if it's missing a couple of safety circuits, it should be no problem.
It all depends on my PSU budget ... I hope I can buy something a bit more serious, which will last me at least 5 years.
for 180RON (~45 USD, including VAT) 3 years ago. At first I abused it with downloads and frequent Windows/UBUNTU reinstalls, generating 10TB of writes in the first few months. After that I became wiser and upgraded to Windows 10, which is much better than the old 8.1 I was having frequents troubles with. I also installed a second drive, a 
, for downloads and games, taking the strain off the SSD. These two steps resulted in cutting the wear in half, generating another 10TB writes in the past 2-2.5 years.
it'll spin for about 8 hours, while my enhanced 2-cell 4400mAh battery pack (from the first picture) could power it for up to 20 hours.
, which also connects to a USB port.
headphones and 
. Bass boost doesn't do much for the speakers, but the headphones sound flat without it. I need loudness equalization for all the different audio and video I watch/listen too ... which may have lower or higher volume the entire length or just in certain places. Loudness equalization pretty much evens everything out, so you don't have to touch the volume dial in Windows or on your speakers.
device or tap into the unprocessed digital signal coming through the video card's HDMI port.
25MHz computer. It didn't have all the fancy features to digitally connect an 
, but it managed to generate some very impressive sounds (for that time) and I even connected it to a joystick once, through it's MIDI/GAME port.
on that PC, it ran really well, but some of the more sophisticated games ran about 30% slower if sound was enabled, so for competitive gaming (like the first Command and Conquer on two computers, linked through a serial COM cable) we usually switched off sound completely ...
Carrizo and 
mainboard. I had several issues with cooling and airflow in my computer case, but I'm finally getting to the bottom of the main problem.
has let CPU temperature go up to 61-62*C at 100% fan speed.
, revealed at the recent Apple event, has "80% more efficient cooling" and is configurable with some very impressive processors, while the GPUs won't be too powerful.
did some announcements and clarifications about current and future products, but the most important of them is about the Model 3. Production is about to begin any day now (initially only for Tesla and Space X employees), then by the end of July reservation holders will get an e-mail with an invite to configure their Model 3.
cells), so that's what customers are hoping for, but it might be less than that, like 70kWh in the first year of production. Don't get me wrong, that is still a lot of energy. For comparison the Chevy Bolt EV has a 60kWh battery pack and has a 230+ mile range. These first Model 3s will most likely exceed that - if I had to guess, I'd say they'll have a 250+ mile EPA rating.
will eventually come with all-wheel-drive option in late 2017 or early 2018. To be clear, early production Model 3s will not be upgradable to dual motor AWD. If you'll want AWD you can return your Model 3 to Tesla for a fair price and order a new Model 3 with the additional options you need.
dual core processor with a 54W TDP, and it was very silent, there was no need for the fan to speed up beyond ~1500RPM. So when I decided to upgrade to the 
quad core processor, which had a 65W official TDP, I thought the RPM may go up slightly, but nothing noticeable, as the Cooler Master Hyper TX2 can handle up to 125W TDP processors. That was nice thought ... but in reality, my new AMD processor can go up to 90W TDP, twice the TDP of my old Haswell Celeron.
Carrizo CPU was getting really hot, as the FAN profile had a target of 70*C. While gaming, the temperature stayed around 65*C, which I was very uncomfortable with.
motherboard doesn't really react to the TDP setting. The main difference I have noticed between 45W/65W is that the CPU gets hot quicker with the 65W setting, but temps and fan RPM stay at almost exactly the same level as with the 45W TDP setting, maybe 1-2 degrees higher.
