Final Thoughts...
This was a really fun project to do. Turning on this computer has to rank as one of the strangest experiences I have ever had. Pushing the power button on a computer and literally not hear anything at all. You watch the screen with deep anticipation wondering if you had done something wrong... the one or 2 seconds that pass as the system does the post tests just prior to displaying anything on the screen were truly torturous! Then pop and up comes the bios. You get in and configure it you your flavor, set up you raid and then go and watch the systems health stats.
Everything is running cool now, but how about under load? So we started the install of Windows XP 64 and for 15 agonizing minutes we didn’t know how things were doing temp wise. Finally Windows came up. We installed the motherboard utility and it's running cool and happy! So we got all the drivers and updates on it. Rebooted a few times. And installed PC Mark and 3D Mark 2006.
The system ran like glass. Not a heat issue to be seen. And man is it fast with those drives. I can’t believe how fast Battlefield 2 or even the beta for Battlefield 2142 ran compared to my workhorse / core gaming systems. All in all I would say this was a success.
Comparison of other popular fan based cooling systems |
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Update:
By tremendous request I am starting to put together some more stats for you all. I didn’t realize this would be such a popular project! I will be adding new information here in the update as I get time to roll it out.
