At 2004-11-10T23:13:13+1300, Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> Not sure about the >3 years, but some of the Athlon (around 1200?)
> chips were running extremely hot (power consumption 120W!!) and some
Yup, some of the AMD parts around that time ran rather warm. Intel
parts have the same problems at times; it's mostly a matter of being
near the end of a particular packaging/fabrication/etc. lifecycle. You
can get parts which run very hot at a particular speed, then they
undergo minor design changes and a packaging or process change that
results in lower power consumption (and therefore lower heat output) and
are then released with a slight speed-bump; you can see these types of
changes between the Athlon CPU cores (e.g. Thunderbird->Barton).
> well-known integrators in Christchurch were too stupid to make a
> system which works (venting the power supply fan spent air straight
> onto the CPU - doh).
For some bizarre reason, the early ATX standard required the PSU fan to
draw air into the case (or, at least, that was the interpretation taken
by most vendors and system builders). Even after that was clarified, it
took a while for some of the less clueful to change their not-so-old
habits.
> High CPU temperatures limit life span. Rumour has it that currently
> the Intel CPUs are consuming 120W and AMDs are significantly lower
> than that.
Yup. Now you also have to take into consideration the heat output of
other components too--for example, the higher-end video cards put out a
fairly serious amount of heat.
> I rather got the impression that the gamer/tweaker market is flooded
> with the crappiest of boards - highly competitive, low prices (are we
> talking professionals here?) and speed is all that counts. Forget all
> about reliability and quality, hey it only has to be 1% faster. I
> presume these people never use a mobo for 3 years anyway, so what the
> heck if it blows up. I mean, why spend a few bucks on reliability when
> they can be spent on some dumb blue lights instead.
You've confused two closely positioned groups; serious gamer/tweaker
types who do have a clue, and idiots. Most of the marketing directed
towards this segment is aimed at second subgroup, it is, after all, a
lot larger. If some piece of basic hardware is obviously targeted at
"gamers", stay well clear.
<analogy type="bad">It's much the same as people who are interested in
performance cars versus the types you might see parading down Columbo
Street on Friday evenings.</analogy>
Cheers,
-mjg
--
Matthew Gregan |/
/| [EMAIL PROTECTED]
