MrQ

Okay guys, I got the last of the stuff I ordered. I reseated the northbridge with AS5 and put on a new AC7 with AS5 on my quad. I also just got the 4x512mb corsair xms2 5300 memory I ordered so my timings tightened up to 4-4-4-12 from 5-5-5-13. I hope my next upgrade will be another 8800gts to run in SLI with my other one. (Could use a new DVD drive. THis thing sounds like its gonna fall apart.)

Sometime next weekend or so I plan on creating a blowhole in the top of my case for 120mm fan. Hopefully that will help temps all around.

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ProfQ

Glad to see you got your latest bag o' goodies!. You'll be happy with the Corsairs. Sometimes I wish mine were still around.

I just did something last weekend that could be of help if you're not too keen on making a hole in the top right now. I got myself a Sunbeam pci Wherever rack and mounted a 120mm fan mid-ship, pointing at my 8800GT and the MB. In my case the board tends to heat up and the top blowhole makes my rig too noisy for my taste, thus I keep it at min w the fan controller.
Between the 110CFM high flow rear exhaust fan and the new pci wherever rack fan, temps have improved a few degrees. Gives me some headroom before I decide about WC. If you want to see a picture of this simple fix, let me know. I'll be glad to post it.

Question, I just reseated my Zalman 9700NT, but did not use AS5, used the Zalman paste. My temps are not consistent. Idle floats bet 37 and 48 degrees (the fan was loose but working fine, paste was hardened), and load was bet 41 and 54. Now giving it a week as suggested by Zalman. You think I should redo w the AS5?

MrQ

Well on overclock with the AC7 and AS5 mine tend to fluctuate between 38 idle -54 load.

Did you make sure you had a tight seal between the HS and the cpu? If the HS isn't seated firm you will get a lot of temp problems.

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ProfQ

I did have a tight seal, yet found the Zalman CPU Fan loose when I opeened the rig. You could move it side to side a few degrees w no effort. Took it out, cleaned and reseated w fresh Z paste. Now it's tight, but I don't know if this will have to be a tune-up I'll have to repeat once in a while. It had been about 4 months since I had worked on it.

I'm concerned 'cause I now know the thing seems to vibrate itself loose, and the Zalman paste turns to dry gunk when it happens. Maybe the AS5 could survive best.

About my temps, right now. I'm at idle (idling at 2.8XGHz at the moment, not at 3.0), my temps are, all cores reporting w Core temp, 43, 44, 42, and 47 (temperatures of cores 4 to 1). But this is w the fresh Zalman paste that needs a week to stabilize. I also see a 39 degree cpu temp on PcProbe, and 42 degrees for the cpu on HWMonitor- the Cpu-Z gadget. This w a 37 degree MB, and 36 degree Case temp. I'm in Sydney (hot afternoon).

You think the AS5 might work best, or maybe some loctite on the Zalman's screws?

MrQ

If Zalman paste has a tendency to dry out, just get same AS5, re-seat the HS, (and while your at it might as well re-seat the NB with AS5 as well. That thing gets ridiculously hot), and if you think its necessary add the loctite to the Zalman screws.

Should put an end to your worries.

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ProfQ

I was planning on replacing the stock 8800GT cooler this weekend w a Thermalright HR-03 GT. Maybe I'll just pull the Zalman out and redo the whole thing then. Now where did I put that AS5?

My NB has a Zalman 47 Fan-shaped HS, it is tight, and I have no reason to believe air got in and dried the Zalman Paste, but thanks for the suggestion. Since I'll be working on my rig, I'll check it out, anyway.

And yeah, I love the medium strength Loctite. It lets u remove and redo without too much hassle, yet holds nicely when vibration is a problem. Although I never heard of it being used in a PC.

Crusaders!

Hopefully someone out there can help a novice in this field...
I have looked at the thread and come face to face with the problem that is updating my BIOS - I am now into 0901 and found the part about creating a boot disk and backdating to 0608... sounds great but every time I try this the boot message comes up with an error stating that the IDE drives cannot be found - I have 4 SATA drives running and my optical drive doesn't have an IDE interface.

Any advice/direction would be great:

MrQ

You need a IDE drive to do this procedure, I think. Can you scavenge an old ide cd rom drive from another computer? Oh, BTW, PM Diddler,the guy who made the post, to see if he knows anything else.

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Crusaders!

Looks like I might have to try and find one - my old Dell is a SATA as well!
Cheers though.

Ravin

I have a spare 20Gb ATA133 IDE drive. PM if you want it shipped cheap. (edit...I'll have to check intl shipping rates)

Edit 2: Shipping from US to UK is cost prohibitive.....you can buy a drive much sheaper locally!

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