Page five of Cardboard and Steel has been uploaded, there is but one chapter until things get back to normal around here. Normal, of course, meaning sentient home appliances or whatever.
You may not know this, but there is an odor that accompanies the heat destruction of an Athlon 2100+. It is not terribly unpleasant by itself, but when you realize that you have reduced your machine to a doorstop (or a boat anchor, if you prefer to see things in a nautical framework) you might make a sound like a chimp. That's what I did, just a little animal yelp. Seven pages worth of humans answered my call for assistance, and you might note that I did post up until a certain point - it is easy to figure out what happened.
Reading these graciously offered suggestions, it became clear to me that since I wasn't actually overclocking the machine, I didn't really need the fancier stuff. It should have worked just fine with the stock sink. The issue was that this case, the case I've had since we started Penny Arcade in the hallowed Apartment 26 - the case that was perfectly fine for a P2-450 and a Voodoo 2 - just didn't have the room for all this shit to breathe. When you take into account the fact that my Video card alone has as much RAM as my whole machine back in the day, it starts to become clear. The last motherboard I got places the processor right by the vent on the Power Supply as well, so that's no good, either.
I grabbed a variant of this case with an extra fan in the door, and a Volcano 9 heatsink from Thermaltake. For stock speeds, this is almost certainly overkill - but I was starting to get paranoid about hizeat. I moved everything into the new case, and my theory is that I either A) didn't clean the processor thoroughly enough, or B) used too much luxury goo, because it took a second or two to completely obliterate it. Needless to say, I wasn't going to be posting on any forums. The computer issue would be on hold until the next morning, when I could get a new proc. My man Doc and his crew came over to pick me up for some Warhammer 40k around this point, as I desperately needed to inaugurate my lethal Necrons.
In case you were wondering, I fared reasonably well.
Coming home with a 2200+ (they had no Athlon 2100's there, that would have been fine by me) I applied designer goo with the side of a plastic card to the top of the processor, frosting it like some robot treat. Everything is awesome now, and the machine runs, on average, about twenty degrees cooler. I began to notice how warm it was in the new house around this point. I'd been sick for a few days, and a poor judge of temperature - but it wasn't just warm, it was hot, jungle hot. Beautiful birds were making nests in the living room, colorful nests from shredded pizza coupons. These were exotic birds with no place in this part of the world. We have temperature controls for each area in the new apartment now, which Brenna (who is perpetually cold, because her heart is made of unfeeling stone) had seen fit to turn up about ten degrees in every room - bringing the place more in tune with her Mayan Priestess fantasy or some shit. Is this connected to my overheating issue? Let's say Yes. She's not here, what's she going to do about it.
Fans of Frequency, the delectable rhythm/remix game for the PS2, would do well to note that its sequel - Amplitude - features 25 (I thought it was thirty) new songs, online play out of the box, and a release date of March 24th. That's when the new Zelda comes out too, so if you are busy then, I will understand.
(CW)TB out.
strictly fam, members only
