Does anyone use software cooling like rain or waterfall and do they work or are they worthless
- Thread starter Razzer
- Start date
i found them quite useless, really just froze up my computer a lot
but since i do RC5 now full time, there is no need for them.
but since i do RC5 now full time, there is no need for them.
I don't think they are useful unless you leave your Win98 machine on all the time. The instability of that POS OS make it a bad idea to leave it booted for long periods of time. The WinNT kernel has the built in HLT instruction for idle cycles and a very stable kernel which makes these programs useless.
Instability of Win9x or stability of WinNT all depends on how you've got it set up and what it's running on. I leave mine running for days at a time, and only usually reboot when I'm installing software that needs it (or pretends to) or when I'm making performance changes. My NT4 workstation with a PIII/550 at work is slower than my K62-400 was and needs rebooting every day to really work well. Why is it like that? My home machine was customer designed by me and all the software and hardware has been tweaked and made sure of compatibility. The one at work is a POS corporate machine with Registry hacks and extra software loaded which I have limited control over. I COULD make this machine run a lot better, but it shows that WinNT isn't automatically better than Win98.
Anyway, software cooling does work quite well if your CPU is idle most of the time. You wouldn't want to use it exclusively, especially if you do a lot of CPU crunching stuff like 3D games.
Software cooling, like Rain or CPUIdle, use the HLT (halt) instruction built into modern CPU's. NT/2k have that function built into their code, and so do the various *NIX flavors. Win9x OS's don't have it. So you use Rain or CPUIdle. The HLT instruction is issued by the software any time there is not an active process in the CPU. Since most of the CPU's time is spent waiting for I/O to complete (hard drive, memory, USB), the HLT instruction is used quite a bit under normal load. This means that every cycle that's idle sort of just doesn't happen, the CPU is halted. No cycle means no heat is created by that cycle. Overall, the non-occurance and non-heating of those cycles means the CPU doesn't build up as much heat. A very small heatsink and fan could be used on your system then, which makes it easier to use extremely small cases (having that built into Win9x could have helped the movement to smaller FlexATX cases occur faster, since OEM's would know the heatsink didn't need to be as big).
However, this still depends on the CPU being idle much of the time. 3D games take up a LOT more cycles than normal use, therefore there is more heat buildup. Running Rain or CPUIdle while playing a game can help somewhat to reduce the heat increase, however it can't stop it completely, and a larger heatsink would be needed to deal with it effectively. Essentially the heatsink needs to be large enough to deal with the expected maximum heat production, not the average.
If you run Seti@Home or Distributed Computing's client, then Rain or CPUIdle become irrelevant. The client being run takes up any idle CPU cycles itself, and the HLT instruction runs at a lower level. Therefore the client program takes priority and makes use of the idle cycles, leaving none for the HLT instruction to act on, therefore providing no cooling. (You can see those programs running by watching any CPU monitor, which will show the CPU pegged at 100%. Many of them also misinterpret the HLT instruction being run as a real instruction being processed, and say your CPU is at 100% when using Rain, when in fact it just means that 100% of the cycles are either processing data or being halted.)
Anyway, software cooling does work quite well if your CPU is idle most of the time. You wouldn't want to use it exclusively, especially if you do a lot of CPU crunching stuff like 3D games.
Software cooling, like Rain or CPUIdle, use the HLT (halt) instruction built into modern CPU's. NT/2k have that function built into their code, and so do the various *NIX flavors. Win9x OS's don't have it. So you use Rain or CPUIdle. The HLT instruction is issued by the software any time there is not an active process in the CPU. Since most of the CPU's time is spent waiting for I/O to complete (hard drive, memory, USB), the HLT instruction is used quite a bit under normal load. This means that every cycle that's idle sort of just doesn't happen, the CPU is halted. No cycle means no heat is created by that cycle. Overall, the non-occurance and non-heating of those cycles means the CPU doesn't build up as much heat. A very small heatsink and fan could be used on your system then, which makes it easier to use extremely small cases (having that built into Win9x could have helped the movement to smaller FlexATX cases occur faster, since OEM's would know the heatsink didn't need to be as big).
However, this still depends on the CPU being idle much of the time. 3D games take up a LOT more cycles than normal use, therefore there is more heat buildup. Running Rain or CPUIdle while playing a game can help somewhat to reduce the heat increase, however it can't stop it completely, and a larger heatsink would be needed to deal with it effectively. Essentially the heatsink needs to be large enough to deal with the expected maximum heat production, not the average.
If you run Seti@Home or Distributed Computing's client, then Rain or CPUIdle become irrelevant. The client being run takes up any idle CPU cycles itself, and the HLT instruction runs at a lower level. Therefore the client program takes priority and makes use of the idle cycles, leaving none for the HLT instruction to act on, therefore providing no cooling. (You can see those programs running by watching any CPU monitor, which will show the CPU pegged at 100%. Many of them also misinterpret the HLT instruction being run as a real instruction being processed, and say your CPU is at 100% when using Rain, when in fact it just means that 100% of the cycles are either processing data or being halted.)
I have used many of those programs and now I use CPUIdle with Windows 2000 and Windows ME - I have noticed up to 7C drop when running those programs at various loads - I would say it is worth it! also I find the real-time cpu load tray icon indicator VERY usefull - that is why I also keep it on my Windows 2000 installation (I dual-Boot Windows 2000 and Windows ME)
I use Rain on 98SE, and it works very well. It will lower the CPU temp by quite a bit when idle. This is a component that should have been in Win9x anyway. Other OS's such as Unix, Linux, NT4, 2000 all have it built in.
If you have ACPI enabled in Win'98, it will send HLT instructions to your cpu when it's idle and therefore you don't need to run programs like rain/CPU Idle/Waterfall. When I was using standard advance power management I use to use those programs all the time, and without those cooling programs my chip use to get real toasty or at least that's what motherboard monitor was telling me. But after I read somewhere that ACPI sends halt instructions when your cpu is idle, I decided to re-install 98 with acpi enabled and see what happened. After the long painful re-install, I realized I didn't need to run any of those cpu cooling software anymore, since ACPI did it automatically and motherboard monitor even reported the same temperatures had I used any of the same cooling programs before. Of course, what was even better is more freed resources without having to run extra programs.
Windows NT and Windows 98/ME with ACPI do it already. But, why would you want to when there is RC5?
They are worthless...they are effective only when the CPU isn't full utilized, so if you do RC5, SETI, games, etc., it won't help.
Those things aren't terribly desireable even if they do work.
Your best bet tempuarate wise is to get your CPU to a comfortable tempurature under load and keep it at that temperature permanently.
Temp variations aren't good for electronics.
Set up some good cooling for your CPU so that load temperature is comfortable and then crack RC5 for TACube (
) to keep it at a consitant temperature.
Your best bet tempuarate wise is to get your CPU to a comfortable tempurature under load and keep it at that temperature permanently.
Temp variations aren't good for electronics.
Set up some good cooling for your CPU so that load temperature is comfortable and then crack RC5 for TACube (
) to keep it at a consitant temperature.TechMaster : why not use Task Manager (minimized) for CPU load display under win2K? No need to install CPUIdle! I used to find it useful in my Win 95 partition though (never installed 98, I just don't like it). You can even confirm the cooling by just touching the CPU's box (SECC-I) But nowadays I use my 95 partition only for games, so it's not of much use.
Kermit -
You are right but I use it only on a split second situations (burning) to mesure my cpu load - I have no time to put my cursor on the task maneger icon - besides it is easier and CPU Idle also enhances some CPU features (I am sure that Win2K do the same...) - above all - I do see an avrage 4C drop...so I don't mind
You are right but I use it only on a split second situations (burning) to mesure my cpu load - I have no time to put my cursor on the task maneger icon - besides it is easier and CPU Idle also enhances some CPU features (I am sure that Win2K do the same...) - above all - I do see an avrage 4C drop...so I don't mind
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