Water. H20. Aqua. Other than air it is the most fundamental substance on earth. We cook with it, drink it, bathe in it, swim in it and if you watch old movies they need it for birthing babies. Although I have never seen it used for that with any of my three. However, most of us would never willingly put it in our electronic devices. That usually results in the magic blue smoke coming out and it never seems to work the same after that.
I think I might be getting ahead of myself a little bit. Let me back up a little bit.
As most of you know I like computers and electronic stuff. I have been building and fiddling with computers for 30 of my 40 years. I built my first computer at the age of 16. It was a clone of an IBM 80286. It had a whopping 256K of RAM and a 32 Mb Hard Drive. My cellphone puts that to shame these days. Before that I had a home built Apple 2E with DUAL FLOPPY DRIVES!!! I have probably built 200+ computers for myself and others over that time and upgraded or repaired more than that.
However, over the past few years with my increased responsibility in my engineering business and the addition of my third child I have found less time and desire to build and rebuild my computer every few months. Three years ago I gave my desktop up for a laptop computer. Over the past few months I have been getting more involved with some new 3D drafting software at work and the hardware requirements are significant. The limitations of my laptop were beginning to show. I decided that it was time to build a new computer for myself that would have the increased horsepower necessary for my work needs. I made the decision to build my new machine rather than buy something prepackaged. Building from scratch gives you the ability to control whats in the computer and truly tailor it to your needs. You also get more bang for your buck since you dont have to pay for things you already own or bloated software packages that you will never use.
So I started to research components.
I knew I needed a CPU with some real power so it didnt take too much to convince me that I needed an Intel Core i7 processor. AMD still has some nice chips but nothing out there today compares with the dual-quad core power of the i7. I could write a whole blog about the cool things that Intel has done with that processor. I chose the i7-940 running at 2.93 Ghz.
The motherboard is almost as important as the processor. I have always been a fan of Asus components but for this machine I settled on a Gigabyte Ultra-Durable 3 motherboard. It was very highly rated and uses the Intel LGA1366 chipset, SATA 6.0, DDR3 support and USB 3.0. It also had the M.I.T. integrated into the BIOS. This is the tweaking function that allows you to dynamically overclock the processor and get more CPU power for your buck.
I decided that I needed a minimum of 8 GB of DDR 3 RAM. The motherboard is rated for DDR 3 1600 (overclocked from 1100). So I chose G. Skill Ripjaw. I got a matched dual channel set of RAM with 2 banks of 4 Gb each.
The hard drive is a Hitachi Deskstar 2Tb SATA 6.0 hard drive.
The optical drive is a 16x LG Blu-Ray Writer.
The video card I already had at the office. It was left over from some upgrades that I did to the other machines. It is a Zotac implementation of an Nvidia 220 GT with 1 Gb of VRAM on board.
The case is several years old. I bought an all aluminum case (most of them are steel) several years ago. I really liked the case but when I made the move to laptops it got moved to the computer graveyard in my basement. The aluminum case is much lighter and is supposed to help with heat dissipation. So after a little cleaning it was ready to go. I also found a multi-function card reader in one of my old computers and removed it and put it into the new machine.
I was really starting to feel good about this new machine. I thought this was going to be one hot computer. Boy was it...
Assembly went well. I was surprised how much fun I had assembling one from scratch again. After an hour or so I had it all put together in the case and it was ready for the test run. I hooked up all of the wiring and pressed the power of button. Fans started whirring and I was greeted with the familiar beep of a booting computer. I went into the BIOS and started poking around a little. I typically check the system diagnostics to see if something seems out of whack. While there I noticed that the processor temperature was 55C at idle. Thats 131F. That is really hot for a computer that isnt doing anything. Back several years ago processors would shut down at 60C and my computer was 5C away from that and it wasnt even doing anything. I shut the machine down and started to check and see if anything was hooked up wrong or not working. Everything appeared to be in order.
I did some more research on the internet and found out that i7's are the hottest processor intel has ever developed. Literally. The temperatures that I was experiencing weren't uncommon and were actually well within design limits. I finished with the computer and started loading software. After the initial shock about the processor temperature I started logging the temperature during usage and I found out that the processor would go up to 100C when it was fully loaded. Holy crap!!! 100C is 212F. Thats boiling. Again this is within design limits and the processor has circuitry that actually will reduce the speed of the machine to keep the computer from going over 100C and damaging the processor.
After a week or so with the new machine I started to wonder if there was a better way to cool the computer than the stock fan that came with the processor. My brother said that I should look into a water cooler like his alienware computer has. I told him that water coolers were too much of a risk and too much hassle to use. In all of my years of building and working on computers I had never fooled around with water coolers. A water cooler is a system where you construct a piping system in your computer that has heat sinks that attach to your processor , video card, hard drive, etc. These are piped to a radiator unit and a pump unit that circulate the water and cool the system. They have been used by people who wanted to seriously over clock their machines for years. The problem is that you have to custom build the system and cut the tubing and assemble all of the compoents and insure that you dont have any leaks in the case with your very expensive components. One mistake and you have a big steel box full of wet, non functioning computer equipment.
He told me that the water cooler in the alienware was different. It was a closed loop system prepacked from the manufacturer. I started to do a little research and I found that he was right. Corsair makes a system called the H50 that is a prepackaged water cooler for Intel systems. All you do is install it on the processor like a typical air cooled fan and them mount the radiator to the back of the case like a case fan nd connect the power. It is already prepiped and ready to go. I ordered it and installed it in the machine.
The results were amazing. Prior to the installation of the water cooler the computer idled at 50C and went to 98C under load. With the H50 installed the computer idles at 38 C and under a heavy load of all 4 cores ripping a Blu-Ray disk it went to 60C. That's a full 40 degrees cooler and only 5 C warmer than the air cooler kept the processor at idle!!! Physics tells us that water has 4x the capacity to absorb heat than air. That is why it is such an effective heat transfer medium.
Ill run some bench marks of temperature and performance and post them later. Suffice it to say that it is a very cool machine now.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
So I went back to the hospital...
Ok so I went to Brookwood Hospital last week.
(oh no here he goes again)
No its not like that I promise. My friend had a baby and we went to visit
(see, its coming)
We parked in the parking deck and got everyone out (noah, beth and hannah included). We all walked across the bridge to the hospital.
(brace yourself)
And everything was fine. See I told you it wasn't going to be like that. We had a nice visit, got to see cute little Levi. Melinda decided that she wanted another one. I decided she was nuts. We said our goodbyes and headed back to the car.
At Brookwoods Women and Childrens center you have to pay your ticket in the hospital at the automated machine. So I put the ticket in the machine, forked over three bucks for a 30 minute visit and we headed back up the elevators.
We got the herd loaded up in the car and attempted to find our way out of the parking deck. Brookwood has the most confusing parking deck that I have ever seen. You drive up to go down, left to go right and farther into the deck to leave. I'm not sure what genius designed it but whoever it was they paid him too much.
When we finally made it to the gate there was a car already in front of us. If you arent observant enough to take your ticket into the hospital with you then you have to do the whole ticket pay thing at the gate. Apparently the guy in front of us was one of those people. He was in the process of putting his ticket into the flashing blue slot as we pulled up. It took him a few tries but he got it to go in finally and the automated machine told him that he owed brookwood hospital $3 for the privilege of parking his car for 30 - 45 minutes. Apparently this was a bit more than the hapless fellow had in his cup holder because he began frantically looking around his car for change. You could tell he wasnt really getting anywhere because the searching got more frantic and the passenger seat and glove box were next on the treasure hunt. Im not sure what he found there but it wasnt a fistful of washingtons because he had to look in the back seat next. I guess thats where he hid his stash because he started feeding the machine money. Im not sure if he just wasnt that good at counting or if he had to call the bank for a loan because he had to go back to the back seat again and get some more cash He then proceeded to feed another round of quarters into the machine. The whole ordeal of paying his parking had taken nearly 10 minutes. We enjoyed watching the show. Especially considering that the gate had been up the whole time. Every freaking second tat he spent rummaging around his car for wadded up dollars and quarters stuffed between the seats. We drove out without even stopping and laughed nearly all the way home. I was so amused that it didn't even occur to me that we paid our ticket unnecessarily until I was almost all the way to the house.
(oh no here he goes again)
No its not like that I promise. My friend had a baby and we went to visit
(see, its coming)
We parked in the parking deck and got everyone out (noah, beth and hannah included). We all walked across the bridge to the hospital.
(brace yourself)
And everything was fine. See I told you it wasn't going to be like that. We had a nice visit, got to see cute little Levi. Melinda decided that she wanted another one. I decided she was nuts. We said our goodbyes and headed back to the car.
At Brookwoods Women and Childrens center you have to pay your ticket in the hospital at the automated machine. So I put the ticket in the machine, forked over three bucks for a 30 minute visit and we headed back up the elevators.
We got the herd loaded up in the car and attempted to find our way out of the parking deck. Brookwood has the most confusing parking deck that I have ever seen. You drive up to go down, left to go right and farther into the deck to leave. I'm not sure what genius designed it but whoever it was they paid him too much.
When we finally made it to the gate there was a car already in front of us. If you arent observant enough to take your ticket into the hospital with you then you have to do the whole ticket pay thing at the gate. Apparently the guy in front of us was one of those people. He was in the process of putting his ticket into the flashing blue slot as we pulled up. It took him a few tries but he got it to go in finally and the automated machine told him that he owed brookwood hospital $3 for the privilege of parking his car for 30 - 45 minutes. Apparently this was a bit more than the hapless fellow had in his cup holder because he began frantically looking around his car for change. You could tell he wasnt really getting anywhere because the searching got more frantic and the passenger seat and glove box were next on the treasure hunt. Im not sure what he found there but it wasnt a fistful of washingtons because he had to look in the back seat next. I guess thats where he hid his stash because he started feeding the machine money. Im not sure if he just wasnt that good at counting or if he had to call the bank for a loan because he had to go back to the back seat again and get some more cash He then proceeded to feed another round of quarters into the machine. The whole ordeal of paying his parking had taken nearly 10 minutes. We enjoyed watching the show. Especially considering that the gate had been up the whole time. Every freaking second tat he spent rummaging around his car for wadded up dollars and quarters stuffed between the seats. We drove out without even stopping and laughed nearly all the way home. I was so amused that it didn't even occur to me that we paid our ticket unnecessarily until I was almost all the way to the house.
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