Reading here did wonders to spur on my desire for an upgrade. One of the problems with my old, generic aluminum case was the heat it gave off. It sits under the desk along the left side, and that whole left leg/wall was very warm.
Here in southern California, we have a big computer fair around once per month out in Pomona, which is an annoying one hour drive for me to the Inland Empire area. One hour of driving, $6 to park, $8 to enter. What I won't do to avoid Fry's.
The show has shrunk quite a bit in recent years. It used to take up two big halls at the fairground, now it's one. And it used to run two days, now just one. This made it easier to get around, at least. I checked every table, but sadly, no sign of the Antec P180.
In the end, I went with a Thermaltake TsunamiDream glossy black case. The motherboard was an Asus P4P800 SE, since I have an old P4 3Ghz and saw no reason to buy a new CPU.
In the process, I did some DVD shopping. Almost every vendor at the show is Chinese, and they are shameless in displaying pirated DVDs. One vendor had a whole table of those 3 disc sets with a full season of anime shows. But what the heck, I got Kung Fu Hustle for 10 bucks. 🙂
Once home, construction began. The TsunamiDream case is expensive; $99 without a power supply. But I had a new 450w PS in my existing case. It had 2 120mm fans and a 80mm fan, though, the only case I could find at the show that had it. In went the motherboard, after considerable fighting with the Intel heat sink/fan.
After a lot of surgery, things were set to go. I decided for the time being NOT to install my SB Audigy to try out the on-board audio. I haven't put the audio through its paces yet but plan to.
So far it seems to be working well. The only problems on boot was the BIOS saw the CPU as 3.0GHz but that the clock speed was 2.6GHz. I changed the multiplier from 13 to 15 and now it sees the CPU has 3GHz. The case is quieter than the old one and a lot cooler. No heating the entire left side of my desk. CPU temp is around 105F, as is the case temp. But the fan speeds are quite slow, around 1370 rpm.
Unfortunately, I fouled up my mail store. I THOUGHT it was on the D: drive, but apparently it wasn't. When I imported those messages, they were from August of last year, which was when I did my last reinstall. Arg! I also forgot to save my old bookmarks, but I had a backup a few months old, so only a few were lost.
Mostly I've been updaing and reinstally everything. Windows Update is running in the background as I type. But so far, so good, and I have a quieter, cooler case.
If anyone knows how to speed up those case fans, please let me know. TIA.
Here in southern California, we have a big computer fair around once per month out in Pomona, which is an annoying one hour drive for me to the Inland Empire area. One hour of driving, $6 to park, $8 to enter. What I won't do to avoid Fry's.
The show has shrunk quite a bit in recent years. It used to take up two big halls at the fairground, now it's one. And it used to run two days, now just one. This made it easier to get around, at least. I checked every table, but sadly, no sign of the Antec P180.
In the end, I went with a Thermaltake TsunamiDream glossy black case. The motherboard was an Asus P4P800 SE, since I have an old P4 3Ghz and saw no reason to buy a new CPU.
In the process, I did some DVD shopping. Almost every vendor at the show is Chinese, and they are shameless in displaying pirated DVDs. One vendor had a whole table of those 3 disc sets with a full season of anime shows. But what the heck, I got Kung Fu Hustle for 10 bucks. 🙂
Once home, construction began. The TsunamiDream case is expensive; $99 without a power supply. But I had a new 450w PS in my existing case. It had 2 120mm fans and a 80mm fan, though, the only case I could find at the show that had it. In went the motherboard, after considerable fighting with the Intel heat sink/fan.
After a lot of surgery, things were set to go. I decided for the time being NOT to install my SB Audigy to try out the on-board audio. I haven't put the audio through its paces yet but plan to.
So far it seems to be working well. The only problems on boot was the BIOS saw the CPU as 3.0GHz but that the clock speed was 2.6GHz. I changed the multiplier from 13 to 15 and now it sees the CPU has 3GHz. The case is quieter than the old one and a lot cooler. No heating the entire left side of my desk. CPU temp is around 105F, as is the case temp. But the fan speeds are quite slow, around 1370 rpm.
Unfortunately, I fouled up my mail store. I THOUGHT it was on the D: drive, but apparently it wasn't. When I imported those messages, they were from August of last year, which was when I did my last reinstall. Arg! I also forgot to save my old bookmarks, but I had a backup a few months old, so only a few were lost.
Mostly I've been updaing and reinstally everything. Windows Update is running in the background as I type. But so far, so good, and I have a quieter, cooler case.
If anyone knows how to speed up those case fans, please let me know. TIA.
