February 21, 2009
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today was a rather productive and somewhat sad day!
i went out to Fry’s to buy a new cooler for my graphics card. i bought it, i brought it home, and i installed it. turns out the directions could not have been more wrong for my card: the holes it told me to use were too spread out, and the screws i was told to use were too tall, so it wouldn’t install correctly.
after fixing that and raging over the VRAM heatsinks continually falling off, i finally get everything set up and working. my temps didn’t fall as dramatically as they did with the cooler i installed on my old x1950 pro, but they dropped a fair amount when idle and dropped somewhat when in use. my idle temps are around 43 C, and under max load (F@H) it sits at 74 C. not TOO shabby, considering i used to idle at ~60 C and would hit 78 C under load, with the fan cranking away at more than 60% duty cycle.
i also am going to vacuum my car later and put in new floormats.
the sadness? after booting up i heard a very rhythmic CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK. i started unplugging things, and found out it was my anime drive. i did some tests on it, and from what i can hear the motor is dying, along with the control circuitry.
so my anime is all gone. ;_;
