CyberpowerPC – Page 3

November 22, 2011August 29, 2026

CPU cooling

I decided to add a second fan to the radiator of the CPU’s liquid cooler (a pre-filled self contained unit that came with the system) to get a push-pull cooling configuration. The air being blown out the case seemed a little on the warm side, so I figured a second fan would help keep things cooler.

The fan is a Scythe S-FLEX 120 mm case fan (which seems to have been just deactivated on Newegg…maybe I bought their last one). The original radiator fan started buzzing so I purchased one to replace it. Now there are two of them blowing air through the radiator. Really nice fan, very quiet, which is why I bought another one.

Getting more air flow through the radiator now, and the exhausted air feels a little bit cooler.
Then I thought “I wonder what the motherboard thinks the CPU temperature is”. I had never bothered to monitor any of the motherboard sensors before. After a little bit of searching, I installed lm-sensors.

If the output of sensors is to be believed, then the CPU cores at idle are running around 45-47°C.

Core	Temp (°C)
Core 0	45
Core 1	46
Core 2	47
Core 3	45

CPU temperatures at idle

Seems pretty high to me. I’d have expected something in the 30s.

Starting up the distributed.net client drives up the detected temperature into the high 80s.

Core	Temp (°C)
Core 0	86
Core 1	89
Core 2	83
Core 3	85

CPU temperatures under load

Whoa. Way high, and much higher than I expected.

So now I’m starting wonder: is the motherboard temperature sensor accurate? Is there a problem with the cooling block? Should I take it off and inspect it? Maybe it’s time for another cooler?

The other thing I need to do is check the temperatures reported by the BIOS to see how it compares. I think a little investigation is in order.

Update: BIOS shows pretty much the same temperature (~47°C). Definitely time for some investigating. These temps just seem a little higher than they should be.

Update 2: A little bit of Google’ing shows that idle temps in the 40s aren’t unusual for the i7-930. My temps are still a little on the high end of the range that I’ve been seeing. Maybe a cooler upgrade is in my future soon. The Corsair H70 looks nice.

Update 3: The second fan seems to be helping. Under distributed.net load, the CPU is running in the low 70s now

Core	Temp (°C)
Core 0	73
Core 1	75
Core 2	71
Core 3	72

CPU temperatures under load with a second fan on the radiator

November 15, 2011August 29, 2026

BIOS frustration

The motherboard in my computer (Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5) has some neat features for updating the BIOS, including being able to update it from a USB drive without having to boot into an OS (Q-Flash).

Q-Flash worked pretty well in the past, but it seems to be limited to BIOS images less than 1MB.

The most recent (beta) BIOS updates for this motherboard have been just over 1.2 MB. Q-Flash no like.

There’s another utility called @BIOS that lets you flash BIOS updates from within Windows, but it only works in Windows.

Made an initial attempt at booting up FreeDOS to use Gigabyte’s DOS based FLASHSPI.EXE utility, but FreeDOS complained about the CD driver not being loaded for some reason. Guess where I put the BIOS image and FLASHSPI for flashing.

So now I’m stuck. Haven’t done much more with FreeDOS yet. Probably could get it working if I banged at it hard enough.

It’s frustrating though that there’s this perfectly good built-in Q-Flash utility for flashing the BIOS, but it’s crippled by a size limitation.

Really? A motherboard that supports 24GB of RAM, USB/SATA ports up the wazoo, a 2.8GHz quad-core CPU and it can’t flash a BIOS larger than 1MB. What is this, the 1980s?

July 26, 2011August 29, 2026

RAM anyone?

I now have 12GB of DDR3 available if anybody is interested in buying them.

They are ADATA Gaming Series 2GB DDR3 1600 sticks (6 of them) that have been running in my desktop for just over a year now (up until today).

Currently retailing on Amazon.com for $33 and on Newegg.com for $24. $20/stick or $100 for all 6 of them. Also willing to entertain reasonable offers.

July 26, 2011August 29, 2026

RAM RAM and more RAM

24GB of RAM to replace the 12 currently in my system.

Now I can run some really big simulations.

Update: Woohoo! Back up and running with twice the memory and all the goodness!

March 30, 2010March 24, 2024

Unboxing the new computer

The computer came in a big box containing several smaller boxes with all the bits and pieces. Well, one large bit and several smaller pieces.

A large cardboard box sitting on the floor. The box contains my new computer.

The Thermaltake Element T case. The dogs were quite intrigued.

A box containing a Thermaltake ElementT computer case

Two black labrador retrievers sniffing at a black computer case sitting on the floor

First thing I had to do was crack it open and check out the inside. Had to get past the packing foam first.

Inside the computer case filled with packing foam

The inside of the case is quite spartan compared to what’s in my current computer. A nice roomy case.

Inside the Thermaltek ElementT computer case. The motherboard, CPU cooler, video card and power supply are visible.

Looking at the upper portion of the case showing the mother board, CPU cooler and RAM slots

After poking around in the BIOS to see what there was, I set about installing Fedora 12 onto the machine. With Hyperthreading enabled, it shows up as 8 processors of computing goodness.