TechBlog from Sewell

In recent years the clock speeds of CPUs (Central Proccessing Unit) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) have been increasing by leaps and bounds! The industry seems to not be slowing in their desire to create the perfectly smooth and functional system. What once seemed like a normal wait time for an appplication to open is now like an eternity. People crave a fast system. It is just that simple. Where would this world be without multitasking anyway? More specifically just the last couple of years has brought about a new type of processing through Multi-Core CPUs. Two are obviously better than one right? In almost every case the anwswer to that question would be yes. However, there are a few drawbacks that Dual-Core processors bring that has been overlooked by more than a few companies.

For gaming lovers everywhere we have that GIANT in Redmond, Washington to thank for the Xbox 360. What an awesome piece of hardware, as long as it is functioning correctly that is. What’s this you say…you haven’t heard of the issues that our plaguing the Xbox 360. Put it this way the inside of the machine is burning like a volcano. For some reason it seems that cooling was not high on the priority list of the system designers. Or maybe it was…but the system designers didn’t get the last say. In all of my speculating when the marketers were introduced to the system they may have thought it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Yes boys and girls it takes fans running at high speeds to keep a system stable, especially if you live in a house where your wife likes to turn up the thermostat in the winter.

To make this point perfectly clear take a jaunt on over to one of my favorite gaming sites for their take on this issue. www.FIRINGSQUAD.com

“In an effort to keep the system quiet, Microsoft is overly aggressive with running the fans slowly. The best approach for Xbox 360 stability is placing a small exhaust fan to augment the existing solution. An enterprising entrepreneur could probably make a small fortune selling an added exhaust fan for the Xbox 360 powered by the rear USB port. The Xbox 360 just needs a little extra boost – that’s all.”

In my opinion by far one of the greatest drawbacks to PC processing (and hinderances to my sweet OVERCLOCKING SKILLS) is this thing I learned about in physical science called…HEAT!!! My mother always warned me not to touch a hot oven when I was younger, but believe me you would not want to touch a processor with a couple of volts charging it either.

Today’s processors are scorching hot and for the fastest processors you will need special cooling in order to control the fire your Power Supply is creating.

I will share a few of my suggestions on how to do this.
1. A case built for your cooling needs.
2. Adequate room temperature. (Somewhere between 65-75 Farenheit).
3. Good use of thermal paste.
4. Specifically desiged CPU heat sink and fan or liquid cooling :).

Particularly I have found that an excellent cooling solution is the Zalman CNPS9500 LED! I modified my old Alienware with this CPU cooler and now I have built my new gaming rig with the same awesome product!!!

You can easily get a sustained 40 degrees celcius as long as you use some Artic Silver 5 and have good fans in your case.

Notice the 3 heatpipes coming up from the heat sink in a figure-8 config making a total of 6 heatpipes. What a beautiful piece of copper!

A great review of the product can be found here at techPowerUp.

Something extremely exciting has taken place at Sewell Direct just recently.
We have just added Nvidia Video Cards on the website!!

The following graphics cards are ready to ship:

-XFX GeForce 7800 GT-
SW-4270
-XFX GeForce 6600 LE-
SW-4271

From what I hear this is just the beginning!! So stay tuned.

Expect a new article from me soon about my new gaming rig!

Well I better get back to gaming…

–Tikiman (Scott Sibley)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 30th, 2005 at 4:01 am and is filed under Company, Other, Power, VGA, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.