Mini upgrade - CPU Fan & Hard Drive

[OldAirmail]

My CPU fan has started making noise so I decided to be a little pro-active and replace it. The temperature was normal, but who knew when it would stop altogether.



Underneath it, I have an Intel i5 2500K. The "K" at the end of the number means that it was made to be overclocked. If you wanted to.

(Side note - My motherboard will take an i7 CPU. But because of the Sandy Bridge chipset it can't fully utilize the i7. FSX can't utilize the full power of the i7 either for that matter. Just something to think about when you go picking out "THE BEST" components. BTW - I knew all this before I bought the parts, but it was the best that I could afford at the time.)

So far I haven't felt the need to overclocked the CPU. FSX runs fine, and that's really the only "game" that I play.

And after thinking about it for a few days I decided not to go crazy on water cooled pumps systems etcetera. A couple of years ago I did OC it some. Just to see what it was capable of. I didn't notice anything special in day to day use, so why bother.



To me that "K" means that it's made to take some punishment and keep on working. Think of it as an insurance policy if you don't overclock.

But I did want something better than the stock Intel fan that it came with. What I decided on was the Thermaltake Contac 21 Universal CPU Cooler. At $25 it's cheap enough and looked to be an improvement. It also comes with a second set of clips to add another fan on the opposite side if needed.







Replacing the CPU fan should be looked at as an opportunity. If you don't take everything apart and blow out all the dust that's built up inside your case now, you never will do it.

It's kind of like cleaning the toilet. You don't want to do it, but every few years you probably should do it.



If you remove the fan from the main stack before mounting it to the CPU/motherboard it'll only take about 5 or 10 minutes. Snapping the fan back in with the wire clips takes about 1 minute.

Getting EVERYTHING unplugged and plugged back in took a heck of a lot longer.

Plus the metal base that my motherboard is screwed to doesn't have a cutout that gives you access to that area. MORE stuff to disassemble! Essentially, I had to take out the motherboard completely.




As I said elsewhere, I have a lot of USB cables plugged into my computer. Before plugging them back in I used a Brother PTouch to label them all. I then plugged them in as groups (Saitek panels, USB monitors, mouse/keyboard/printer, etc).

This worked out rather well, because when I started up FSX and SPAD I noticed that the Saitek BIP was lit up only 1/4 as bright as it should be. Finding which cabe was which was simple. It's plugged into a powered USB hub and the plugin transformer will probably need to be replaced.

But all's well, that end's well.

Kinda.

[Bass]

Just a note.
That noise most likely is due to a dry axle.
If removing (#1) the cover in the middle, and put a tiny drop of thin acid free oil in, it prob will run silent again

[OldAirmail]

I tried that some time back. I used Tri-Flow but it didn't make much difference.

It wasn't all that bad until the fan had to speed up.

It does work, but I no longer trust it. It's now in the box of "emergency/old" parts. Actually, I could build another computer from all the spare parts.

[OldAirmail]

One of the biggest improvements that I've ever made has been to install a faster drive.

I'm using a 250 GB Samsung 830 SSD, mostly for my OS and FSX. The SSD usually has about 100 to 110 GB free. Almost everything else goes on a fast spinner. (Some installers absolutely will not let you install their programs where you want )

I just replaced the second drive, a Western Digital Caviar Black, with a better WD Blue drive. The old WD Black was 500 GB and had more than enough room on it. The problem was that it only had 16mb of cache and was SATA II. The new one, even though it's a blue version, is faster with 64mb and is SATA III.

The WD Black series is faster than a WD Blue drive. No doubt about it. And the price isn't all that great anymore. But the biggest difference (assuming spin rate and cache are equal) between Black and Blue, is in the speed of reading and writing small files. On the other hand there isn't much difference between the two in the handling of large files.

My choice of the blue was simply a mater of money. That, and the fact that I don't think that I'll ever notice the small difference between the two.



My hard drive setup was with the SSD SATA III on a SATA III motherboard connection, and the WD Caviar Black SATA II on a SATA II motherboard connection.

SATA II is supposed to transfer data at speeds up to 3Gb per second. SATA III is supposed to transfer at speeds up to 6Gb per second. A SATA III drive will work on a SATA II motherboard connection but at the slower speed.

So if your computer doesn't have SATA III but you're in need of a new drive, and you intend to replace your motherboard in the future, by all means get a SATA III drive.



I cloned my old WD Caviar Black to the new WD10 EZEX (the WD Blue) which was on a SATA III motherboard connection.

Most disk manufacturers provide free software to clone (copy (although you NEVER want to simply copy it)) your old drive to the new drive. In the case of Western Digital the software was Acronis True Image WD Edition. If you don't have a Western Digital hard drive this probably isn't going to work.

The process was very easy to understand. If in doubt there is a manual, but I haven't a clue what it says. As I said, it was very easy.



As my SSD hadn't Changed in any way I was very surprised when my computer started up and said that there was no bootable disk in the system.

After trying several things, I unplugged both hard drives leaving only the SSD (the system drive) connected. The computer started and complained about there being no page file. Notice ignored.

Turn off computer. Plug in ONLY the new drive. The computer started and complained about there being no page file. Change the drive letter from F: to E:. Restart the computer. Everything is now running very well.

After resetting everything to the proper configuration (C: and E: drive letters) I received a very noticeable boost on startup and shutdown, as well in windows operations such as starting and running many programs.

BTW - ever since getting my SSD I've had the page file set to the E: drive.


Another BTW - after testing the new drive for a couple of days, my old drive will replace an even older drive as a backup drive. Nothing gets wasted.

[OldAirmail]

A short note on the new CPU fan.

Checking on the fan, I turned off everything in the room that makes noise.

Listened to the CPU fan.

Checked to see if it was working??

Tried listening to the CPU fan again.

Checked, again, to see if it was working. Yes, it is working.

If you want one of the quietest fans that I've ever seen, this is it.



So far it hasn't had to speed up, so I turned off the computer and pulled the fan connector off with the intention of seeing how hot it'd get without the fan running. I was betting that it wouldn't get all that hot.

MISTAKE. The computer wouldn't start back up with the fan disconnected. No problem.

Getting the connector plugged back into the motherboard without taking every thing back out of the case? PROBLEM.

In the end I was able to do it. But I definitely don't want to do it again.