A little more than five years ago, I bought a shiny new PIII 500 and neato white/blue miniATX case to go with it. From there, I steadily upgraded to a PIII 750, then a big jump 4 years ago to a smokin P4 1.6a Northwood and OC'd it to 2.54GHz, still in the same miniATX case, thinking nothing of it. It's really done well because the Northwood's been running at nearly a 1GHz overclock with the OEM HS/fan for that entire time.
I never really dusted out the case, sometimes took the sides of the case off to upgrade sound cards, replace dead network cards, upgrade optical drives and HDDs, etc. No big deal.
Well, one of our customers ordered this basic case that we sell all the time as part of a much larger order, but ended up not wanting it when the parts came in. Instead of returning the case to the distributor, I decided to cough up the at-cost price for the case and take it home.
This case (but mine's black) came home with me tonight.
After moving all the parts out of the old case, I noticed things about the parts that I shouldn't have noticed. They were hot. VERY hot. After pulling the HDD out of the old case, I had to quickly drop it onto the couch for fear of burning my fingers. NOT good.
The motherboard was so caked on with dust and hair (I have animals
) that I emptied the last half of a compressed air can cleaning the CPU HS/fan and PCI slots. I didn't bother pulling the ram.
Anyhow, I dropped the old parts into the new case. Now, it's probably not a big deal to most now-a-days, but the old case I had was built in such a way that if the user took the side of the case off and peered in, the CPU would be hidden behind the power supply. There was probably a quarter or half inch between the power supply and the CPU fan. Then continuing through, you have the HS, CPU, mobo, and back side of the case. That quarter inch or half inch of space apparently wasn't enough airflow for the Northwood because with this new case's PSU mount actually above the motherboard entirely when peering in from the side of the case (my first case with such newness), it's running MUCH cooler. I've been checking periodically and the other parts like video and HDD aren't overheating. SWEET.
I :heart: my new case! Welcome to old technology, Nik, I know. But it's new to me and now that I have a *proper* case for my hardware, I'm actually seeing performance differences in games and such. Wootage!
I never really dusted out the case, sometimes took the sides of the case off to upgrade sound cards, replace dead network cards, upgrade optical drives and HDDs, etc. No big deal.
Well, one of our customers ordered this basic case that we sell all the time as part of a much larger order, but ended up not wanting it when the parts came in. Instead of returning the case to the distributor, I decided to cough up the at-cost price for the case and take it home.
This case (but mine's black) came home with me tonight.
After moving all the parts out of the old case, I noticed things about the parts that I shouldn't have noticed. They were hot. VERY hot. After pulling the HDD out of the old case, I had to quickly drop it onto the couch for fear of burning my fingers. NOT good.
The motherboard was so caked on with dust and hair (I have animals
) that I emptied the last half of a compressed air can cleaning the CPU HS/fan and PCI slots. I didn't bother pulling the ram.Anyhow, I dropped the old parts into the new case. Now, it's probably not a big deal to most now-a-days, but the old case I had was built in such a way that if the user took the side of the case off and peered in, the CPU would be hidden behind the power supply. There was probably a quarter or half inch between the power supply and the CPU fan. Then continuing through, you have the HS, CPU, mobo, and back side of the case. That quarter inch or half inch of space apparently wasn't enough airflow for the Northwood because with this new case's PSU mount actually above the motherboard entirely when peering in from the side of the case (my first case with such newness), it's running MUCH cooler. I've been checking periodically and the other parts like video and HDD aren't overheating. SWEET.
I :heart: my new case! Welcome to old technology, Nik, I know. But it's new to me and now that I have a *proper* case for my hardware, I'm actually seeing performance differences in games and such. Wootage!
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