Checksum Arcanius

A few weeks ago, while de-dusting my desktop computer case, I managed to snap off a plastic clip on my processor heat sink. I was a bit bummed at the time, but the computer seemed to work afterwards, so I didn’t feel too bad. But the computer also started acting flakier than normal. I began getting suspicious and doing some investigating by downloading tools from the ASUS website (my desktop features an ASUS P4P800 Motherboard). The tools let me monitor the temperature of the processor, which I found to be hovering around the scorching 87 degree Celsius mark, occasionally spiking higher during intensive CPU usage. Well, this sounded ridiculously warm to me, and although further investigation taught me that the normal temperature range during load went as high as 75 degrees for my P4 2.8 GHz processor, 87 still seemed excessive. So, corrective action was required.

I talked to Dan and today he was kind enough to give me some thermal grease and some fans and heatsinsk to try. Right now, my box sits open with a new grease job and its original fan and heatsink (still the best fit despite the many possibilities in the box from Dan), and the termperature is holding steady at 46-47 degrees Celcius with mild load.

Unfortunately, the clip is still broken and I don’t know if I can trust the machine to the borken clip’s hands once again. Of course, even the broken clip might provide more force than gavity, which is all that is holding the heat sink on now. At any rate, it will be an adventure.

In the meantime, I am copying the contents of my late laptop Kleinoscope’s hard drive using a slick laptop enclosure lent to me by, once again, Dan. Ten gigs and 34,722 files in and still going strong.

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