Stability, Reliability and Heat in YOUR System
Heat is the great killer in electronics. Every active electronic component uses electricity and therefore creates heat. Now the funny thing is that the heat created increases the resistance of almost ALL electronic components, this causes them to draw more current which creates even more heat.
In electronics, stay cool or keep cool are not a casual greeting, it is an imperative! It isn't given the full attention it should and yet is one of the easiest and cheapest tasks to accomplish in a new build.
First select a case with good internal design and member placement for air flow. Also pay attention to vent and fan placement. Next, how many and what size fans can be mounted. Lastly, install high quality
fans. Many sites have definitive measurements of capabilities.
Next, look at the mobo layout. Aside from the PCI/ISA slots, is the processor and the DIMM slots arranged to allow airflow up and out or does it block and trap heat.
Now pay just as much attention to fan selection for your processor and if needed your video/graphics card.
Lastly, (and this is also for your current system if you have Cyrix, AMD, Pentium or P2) check out a little program called CPU Idle. Its freeware, takes ~500KB of 32 bit memory and will cool down your current or future processor at least 10 degrees without any performance hit.
I use it, it cools and haven't had any problems. The link below explains how it works and is where it can be DLed.
stud.uni-hannover.de
All for now, try it and let me know what you think.
Networm
PS. This is a windows 95/98 program and includes a DOS program.
If you are running NT you don't need it. NT has this function embedded. |
