32c3

I went to the CCC (32C3) gain this year. As always it was great, a really interesting mixture of people geeking out with LEDs and activists trying to save the world. I always leave with mixed feelings. Glad that there is a community of people that are trying to keep a check on our privacy rights, and the freedom of the press etc, but also depressed about the direction that the world seems to be going in. Anyway, below is a machine that makes Crepes to cheer you up.

Liquid Cooling

So my main home desktop machine needed some TLC. Firstly, it was caught in a power surge before I got a UPS system and that damaged the power supply. The result would be that it would instantly restart after shutdown. I checked everything, from the BIOS upwards. This was definitely a hardware problem. The other issue was the machine would run hot under heavy load. Pushing about 70/80 degrees C.

So I eventually got round to fixing the two issues. I got a new 850Watt PSU and installed that. This solved the restarting problem. I also got a refurbished Corsair H90 Hydro cheaply for the replacement cooling solution. The CPU is a Intel i7 3930K, which has a TDP of 130Watts so a air cooling solution wasn’t really up to the job. The H90 is very easy to install, there was plenty of room in my case for an extra fan/radiator at the top. So it was a simple matter of installing the fan at the top, and then screwing the retaining bolts for the cooler on to the CPU socket. There is then a fixing ring for the pump/heatsink assembly that attaches to the bolts. I think it took me longer to unplug all the wires from the back of the motherboard than it did to install the cooler. Result, it has knocked about 8+ degrees of the idle temperature and about 15+ degrees off the load temperature. Which is a big improvement. Now I should really do something about the cooling in my old dual quad core Opteron system… Pictures below.

Liquid cooler for the CPU.
Cooler, GPU and Tesla Card.
Slightly closer on the cooler.
Slightly closer on the cooler.