On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 20:31 +1100, Ken Foskey wrote: > - I will try and clean the heatsink on the Nvidia without removing it > and no worry too much.
Cleaning the Nvidia 8800GT was easier than I thought. I needed those small screwdrivers you use for glasses. The plastic cowling is secured by 7 tiny screws around the edge (web told me it was underneath but it was wrong). I opened it up and there was over 1cm of lint blocking the heatsink. Immediately it dropped from 70 to 50-60. It does go to 70 under load and can climb higher. The fan is now heaps quieter, not spinning up to full speed constantly. So in summary definitely look inside those graphics cards. > - I will clean off grey goo on CPU and replace it with a thermal paste. The grey goo was easy cleaned with isocol rubbing alcohol. Easier than it looked actually. So I had two shiny surfaces. I got MX-2 thermal paste and put that on. It was the only one local store had but back of packet says it is a pretty good one, if you believe advertising. When I put it back together the CPU dropped about 5 degrees straight away and it has only once peaked out at 70 degrees under extreme load (heavy program running and a despeckle on a large scan). The box was cooking so it was basically the ambient temperature of the room and then add a heavy heat load inside. So it is definitely worth replacing the goo! The computer was warm enough to keep your coffee warm, so there is still an issue. I am not going to get aircon any time soon. I was reading that you can use air conditioning filter over the inlets to collect the dust so your case is cleaner. I can only see this working with a positive pressure fan drawing air from outside to inside. Is is worth putting a fan in the case to blow into with a filter on it? -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
