I took that POS Compaq S5000NX back to the store today and used the refund money to buy a nice machine from a local computer builder: slightly slower processor, more memory, way better video card, CD-RW, full size ATX case, Windows 98 (better the devil you know...) NIC card, 72 hour burn-in, and it works just fine. The processor fan is a little loud- I'm going to ask the builder about that.
The Compaq just had way to many problems that Compaq/HP thought _I_I should fix- the last straw was when the 'e-mail support tech' said I would have to remove files one at a time from the INI folders until the problem went away. No thanks.
Carl Byrns wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Ahhhhh....got wise....:) Congrats on the new 'puter. Probably be a much more reliable system in the long run. And for normal applications, can you REALLY tell the difference between a
2.2 ghz and a 2.4 ghz machine? When speeds were slower (~300 mhz or so) yes..you could tell a marked difference, but once it got over the 1.4 - 1.5 ghz level..for most normal applications i really don't think you can notice it.
It will show up in applications like CAD or Games...
We gave up on Compaq when the new one that was bought for my wife's job caught fire when the Compaq delivery guy turned it on...After the tech replaced the machine a total of 4 times and it still wouldn't run Excell, the company gave up and bought an IBM for her.
IBM and HP both have always done a good job of cooling, over engineered by "clone" standards. Compaq did better than most, as did Dell. now with the hotter running cpus, everyone is having to get onboard, often with engineering data from the chip houses.
that is surprising. i have been in "the industry" for the past 40yrs, including peecees, but that does not preclude flukes.
cycle/buck, it's hard now to beat the clones, and the cpu engineering s/b good. that leaves the balance, ps, burn-in, mbo, memory quality/ testing & peripherals to question. ymmv, --Loren
Everybody I have known to of bought a Compaq computer has said the same thing. Total junk. I have no idea what HP saw in Comjunk computer to have wanted to buy them. I have had a HP since '99 (yes its getting slow) and have had excellent service from it. My last computer was a Dell that I bought new before they went total mailorder. Dell's technical support has really slipped in the past couple of years. I think they cloaned the "Get a Dell Dude" and put him in charge of support. I worked on a friends Gateway a couple years ago and was also suprised how idiotic the technical support staff was. This could possibly explain where Radio Shack rejects go to work.
I called the builder this AM and he said bring on in- had one of his techs replace the fan and heatsink while I waited. He said it was the second machine he had replaced the fan on today- seems he went to a 'better' fan but didn't realize how loud it was. He said he won't use the 'better' fan anymore. Now it's queit.
Chuckle.. the Micron Im posting from, has (4) 3" fans, not counting the CPU fan (double fan/heat sink), the server behind me has (2) in the tower and (2) more in the disk array tower, and the Linux box to my right has (2). Its pretty relaxing with all that white noise and every thing stays nice and cool. Though there is a fan in one of these boxes that is loosing its bearings and I can faintly hear it once in a while...Ill have to track it down sooner or later.
Gunner
'If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.'" Steven Levitt, UOC prof.
Sounds like overkill, but then I don't live in the desert- this box has one case fan, one power supply (smart) fan, and one CPU fan. The case fan maybe a bit much, but the video card has lots of heatsinks on it, so who knows?
My old Micron 166mhz laptop has no cooling fan- the processor has a liquid cooling system that uses the keyboard backplane as a radiator. Seems to work well, but the lack of case ventaltion means the area over the HD (left palm rest) gets mighty warm.
I had a, company-supplied, Dell laptop the last year or so before I retired. When I stayed with some freinds for a couple of weeks while recovering from surgery, if I left the laptop open her cat liked to nap on the warm spot, sometimes known as the keyboard .
Carl Byrns wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
The older computers didn't generate nearly the amount of heat newer/faster computers do. I have 2 computers running in here, one a server, and they generate enough heat to mostly keep the room warm by themselves. This one has 4 case fans (two in front of hdd's, two in back), cpu fan and fsb fan, plus the ps fan. The server has the cpu, fsb, and 3 case fans + ps fan. On this machine, the cpu runs about 55C/130F, and the mb runs about
30C/85F, according to asus probe. The server doesn't have the monitoring, but i'm sure it runs about the same.
The cooler you keep electronics, the longer they will last and the fewer problems you will have.
I used to be into high-power sound systems (PA for bars, gotta million stories...) and at one point the Big Idea was to stuff the amps into a dorm fridge with the thermostat set at the lowest temp.
We never did it because we felt queasy about what would happen if the cooling didn't work (Murphy's Law) and a $800 amp (or two) was left running at full output inside an insulated box, but some guys did with great sucess.
Hmm ... 11 Suns (each with one fan at least, the SS-20 with two, and the Ultra-2s have two each. (The SS-20 has one power-supply fan, plus a tiny fan keeping the two internal disk drives cool.) In addition, there are two external CD-ROM drives, one old 1GB drive in a separate enclosure, two racks of drives with four main fans two for the boxes and one for each redundant power supply, plus another rack-mount drive bay with only two fans (and the power supply is built in -- not plug-in modules), plus more fans on the big UPS, and in the tape jukebox, and one in the chassis with two Exabyte 8mm tape drives, one CD-ROM and one CD-RW connected to my desktop Ultra-2. Oh yes -- also some more in the LJ-4 and the Color LJ-5.
So I do have a bit of white noise. I don't even hear the little fan in the laptop and the docking station -- unless I move them to another room, such as the bedroom. :-)
When there is a long enough power outage to have to shut down the UPS (two so far this autumn -- one thanks to Isabel, and one to a more widespread windstorm which made a mess of a lot of the East coast, from here (Virginia) up through New England) the resulting silence is deafening. :-)
Time for the mechanic's stethoscope. Best found before it goes silent. :-)
Good plan to not do it. One of the other members of the Chesapeake Computer Club (now long dead, I think) worked for a place which had to environmentally qualify some minicomputers (Computer Automation's "Naked Mini" if anyone cares). It was left running in an environmental chamber which was testing its behavior running at low temperatures. It was left running over a long weekend, and the refrigeration on the chamber failed. (Fuse blew, or some other failure, I forget which.) Anyway -- he brought the front panel (one of those molded plastic ones with all the lights and switches mounted in there), and it was like Dali's pocket watch -- not quite hot enough to burn the plastic, but certainly hot enough to make it slump. IIRC -- the electronics of the thing survived that abuse. :-)
The "Naked Mini" was the one which was sold with just a front panel, and it was up to you to build it into your product. One of their claims (true, IIRC) was that the documentation weighed more than the computer. Don't you wish that PCs came with such good documentation today? :-)
This a a point that is sorely disputed in some quarters. There is an upper temperature point where the failure rate increases, but it is not clear that by lowering the temperature below that point, reliability improves.
That is why I finally made the switch over to watercooling. CPU is running at about 111F-118F depending on the load and ambient air temps. The water pump only puts out about 20dB, and the two case fans on the radiator are louder that it. I started out using a cheapie set, and soon realized it was a false economy. I expect it to be even cooler once I put the better waterblock in. After that, I'll be replacing the radiatior (last of the old system), and eventually putting a peltier in for about
15C cpu temps. Plus it is fun working on the system.
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