Aw Geez Louise, can ya believe it <smackin' forehead> ...?

After umpteen hours of wailing and gnashing of teeth, from hair-pullin' 
frustration....

The "flakin' out" behavior of my G4 upgraded AIO seems to be resolved - 
and how it got fixed would be hilarious if I wasn't so chagrined at the 
"Doh!" quotient on this one....

When ya crack open yer 'pooter to replace a dying hard drive, might as 
well add some cooling muscle to the heatsink while yer in there, right?  
That's what I was thinking when I picked up a Pentium CPU Fan/Heatsink 
from Rat Shack.  If it can keep an Intel processor from overheating, it 
oughtta work wonders on a G4.  So when the oddball app crashes and 
system freezes began to reappear, and then to increase in frequency, I 
was pretty baffled.  Checked all internal connections many times.  
Double-checked that I'd mounted the heatsink right.  Rearranged the USB, 
FW, and Radeon cards while invoking Voodoo mojo.  Restarted with chassis 
tray slid open, to visually verify the heatsink's fan was spinning.  
Applied a fresh dab of heatsink compound and remounted the heatsink.  
ETC....Things just kept getting worse; and MACh Speed Control reported 
temps climbing into the 64-68 Celsius range.  G4 temp reporting is 
notoriously inaccurate, I know - but that's still quite a jump from the 
48-56 range that was the norm before I  changed heatsinks.

So, one more time, I slid the chassis tray open, started up, and put my 
hand over the heatsink to see if I could detect any "airflow 
anomalies"...and felt nothing.  What the...?  The fan was pushing air 
down onto the heatsink, rather than wicking it away.  Flipped the fan 
over, so I could feel steady airflow coming off the heatsink.  Presto 
change-o!  Temps have dropped a reported 20+ degrees C - and all seems 
stable and normal.  Who'da thunk any reputable company would sell a 
heatsink/fan assembly that had been mis-assembled...?  I know we're just 
talkin' about Rat Shack here, but Geez - it ain't rocket science...!

It's a pretty embarrassing brain cramp for me, not "hand checking" the 
airflow right away....but all's well that ends well, I guess.

Pax,
---
Gene, a.k.a. G-Man
Friends don't let friends do Windows


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