New heatsink, fan and case
Well, today came a new heatsink and fan and case for my computer. In the quest to stop it over heating, these seemed sensible items to get, although admittedly the case is rather an indulgence. Read on for my impressions (and a few pictures) of my new Lian Li PC60 case and Thermalright SLK-900U heatsink.
As some of you may know, I have an Athlon XP 2100+ which is prone to overheating and locking up. With a Zalman copper flower it was hitting 55C when it was idle, and the load temperatures don’t bear thinking about. So I’d heard a lot of good things about Thermalright’s SLK-900U heatsink, a copper monstrosity so big it’s difficult to believe it will fit on the motherboard. Happily it does, using a nice through-the-board mounting system I wish more heatsinks used, as it feels incredibly secure and you know it’s pretty much got to have excellent contact with the CPU core. Assuming, that is, that you didn’t crack it during installation.
The 900U is capable of taking a 60mm, 80mm or 92mm fan, so I put the latter on it, reasoning I could get away with a slower (and thus quieter) one, but still have good airflow. The result looks something like this — rather impressive!
Installation isn’t all that hard, the usual business with the Arctic Silver, then some fun mounting the backplate onto the underside of the motherboard using some gold-coloured standoffs, into which the heatsink is then screwed using spring-loaded screws. Rather daunting when you read the instructions, but on the whole not too hard to do, provided the thing fits on your motherboard. I have an Abit KX7-333 and it just misses some capacitors near the CPU socket.
Maybe one day motherboard designers will leave enough room for huge heatsinks like these.
As for the case, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Ooozing thoughtfulness in the design, it has assorted nice features, like four built-in fans which are actually fairly quiet, thumbscrews for just about everything (including the expansion slots), a gorgeous blue power LED and hyper-bright red hard disk LED, two front USB ports and plenty of room inside. Oh, and a really nice internal hard drive cage.
Transferring my computer into it was a bit of a non-event really. Took ages of course, but I think about half the time was actually doing the heatsink, which was far more nerve-wracking! The ventilation seems good, with a top exhaust fan as well as a rear one, and two intake fans which blow right over the hard drives to keep them nice and cool.
Hmm, not quite as nice as my compact PC-42 (I think that’s the right one). I’m slightly worried about the deformed looking appendage in that photo. Shouldn’t you get a doctor to look at that?
Comment by Alex Mace — Tuesday, 14th October 2003 @ 14:02
Am I never going to live down my foot appearing in that picture?????
Comment by MaW — Tuesday, 14th October 2003 @ 14:14