Building Your Own Computer

[alpal]

Originally Posted by Leo.G

I tighten them till they stop, no force and no torque wrench. The plastic stuff is tricky but again, I don't over tighten them, I guess it's a feel thing when you've done enough of the things, as soon as I feel them bite, that's it.

Thanks Leo,
this video shows the same fan/heatsink assembly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qczGR4KMnY

[AstralTraveller (David)]

My desktop is a bit like grandfathers axe. The case, power supply and CD-ROM are about 15 yrs old, as is the monitor. I spent a bit extra on quality and it's been worth it. The motherboard and CPU were upgraded about 9 years ago. I started with a 1TB drive, then added a 2TB, then added a 240GB SSD for the OSes and VMs, then replaced the spinning disks with a pair of 3TB configured as RAID 0, then a couple of months ago replaced the SSD with a 1TB SSD.

I run Linux and so it is still quite snappy even with the old CPU. However, recently I've been processing large image files and that slows the machine down. Mostly it's just a few seconds wait but when batch converting a set of raw images to fits I can leave the room and get a cuppa. So perhaps this year I will upgrade the motherboard and CPU again.

[Leo.G (Leo)]

RAM may be an immediate answer David, I recently upped mine to 16GB and it's made a lot of difference with image processing, plus it's cheap if you're talking DDR3. Prior to that my son would start the same image on his Lenovo S30 home server with 64GB RAM and Xeon processor and it would be done in no time while mine was still thinking about starting.
My primary desktop I still use has 12TB of hard drives and I built it in 09.
As mentioned, having cats (5 of the things) my son and I regularly take them outside and blow them out with a compressor and annually refresh the heatsink compound.
We have a lot of computer and server gear, including blade cabinets, rack mount and our favourite, a HP G8 micro-server with upgraded CPU and our own design cooling solution.
Air in and air/heat out makes for a great, reliable computer but it boils down to case design in some instances.

[alpal]

Originally Posted by Leo.G

As mentioned, having cats (5 of the things) my son and I regularly take them outside and blow them out with a compressor and annually refresh the heatsink compound.

I don't think should need to replace the thermal compound every year.
Here's a video about it with over 800 comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzJFHTjuIww
and another one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smrDCx2SMHo

Some computer builders use the cheapest compound and some
don't apply it correctly and do temperature tests afterwards
under specific CPU loads to test performance.
My opinion is that if the computer was built by someone else then
you don't know what they've done so it's worth replacing it -
if you can prove any temperature issues.
The replacement time recommendations vary from a few years to 5 years or more.
If you do remove the heatsink you'll have to replace it.

cheers
Allan

[Leo.G (Leo)]

The mention including experience with my sons HP laptop was more "if you start having problems with USB and other ports randomly dropping out check the thermal compound" (which means replacing it)



I don't recommend everyone do it every year, I choose to do it every year.
As for comments on youtube, I've seen some of the dumbest crap (and people with huge followings) I've ever heard on there and ignore it and work from my own experiences and education.
However I used a series of youtube videos to hyper-tune my mount.



As I mentioned, my sons HP 6550B Pro-book had it's motherboard changed twice by a HP engineer who came to our house when USB ports stopped working. Once out of warranty I couldn't afford to buy a new motherboard and when it happened again, we stripped it down and found it was the thermal compound, applied by an engineer in our presence and using the best stuff money could buy at the time. We replaced the compound and the ports started working again, even HP and their engineers didn't know that was the cause of the fault.


Add to that everyone's computer is going to be under different loads and different heat stress loads. I have my 2 primary computers under a shelf so heat is a big factor, nowhere for the hot air to escape, heat stress is bad.
Everyone has different situations, yearly is my choice.
With all of our server gear, as soon as we've purchased it from auction it's gotten a blow out, good external wipe down with metho and new thermal compound.


Whether I've mentioned it or not I have high level qualifications in both electronics and IT (and many other fields, having been on a pension for over 30 years and trying to keep my brain active, I also have experience in every field I've studied). Most youtubers (not all, sorry for any offence) have the intelligence of a caterpillar, eating leaves one end, bird eating the other.
One of my favourites was a fellow showing how to make sure the heatsink was perfectly flat, wet and dry taped onto firm surface (NO, it should be glass) then 10 strokes this way, 10 strokes that way and everyone telling him he's incredible.
I've also seen some AMAZING stuff on youtube!
Except one fellow with a HUGE following, holding an AMD Epyc chip in place with fingers, advertisers pay because of his following but if brains were tissue paper he wouldn't have enough to blow his nose.
Me, I have brains but no one would ever like me, unless they need something fixed, computer, washing machine, TV, car engine rebuilt, shed frame welded up with stick, MIG or TIG and that's just a start to what I know and can do and have been doing for a lot of years.

Anyone with any knowledge (I've also studied mechanical engineering to some extent) knows to keep a surface flat you need to do it in a figure 8 pattern and rotate the job occasionally to not get high or low spots.

[alpal]

Yes Leo,
there is a lot of rubbish on YouTube but also some gems.
I linked those 2 videos more as a point to prove
that we were discussing a very controversial topic where
people had strong reactions and many opposing ideas -
rather than thinking we were all alone in discussing this topic here.

cheers
Allan

[Leo.G (Leo)]

As for stress testing a CPU, I've done it on just one machine out of over 1,000 I've built and repaired over the past 30 plus years (I used to repair motherboards to a component level back in 486 days). That one machine was my sons HP Micro server G8 which now runs a much higher spec Xeon processor than designed for with a cooling system designed by myself and my son without resorting to the butchery most people seem to resort to and without the aid of the larger heatsink fitted to UK only models which could be obtained standard with the Celeron chip or the upgraded Xeon processor, lesser spec than what we fitted.
That runs 24/7, 365 days per year and has NEVER missed a beat. The only downtime is to clean filters, blow the unit out and replace the thermal compound once per year (so it doesn't run 365 day, it gets 2 hours downtime per year). Stress testing it's high spec processor was of great importance because they were far from cheap as a new machine and we certainly didn't want to cook the machine.
We also frequently swap out CPUs in servers, add when finances permit or rob to test out other machines without the outlay for another processor or 2 unless we know it will work. I mentioned the dead BIOS in my Lenovo D30 my son is flashing so I can have a twin, 8 core processor unit as my primary PC with 64GB of ECC RAM per CPU. it should be an amazing image processing beast eventually. Both processors were pinched from a HP G8 blade server for testing.


Sorry, back to thermal compound:

I know from a lot of experience and from every manufacturers specifications that thermal compound should be applied in the thinnest possible layer.


https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...mal-paste.html

Originally Posted by Intel

Apply thermal paste onto the center of the CPU’s IHS. (If you already have thermal paste pre-applied on your cooler, you can skip this step.) You only need to apply a small amount — roughly the size of a grain of rice or a pea — onto the center of the integrated heat spreader.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explor...-should-i-use/

Originally Posted by Corsair

Your CPU and cooler will work perfectly with the application of a pea-sized amount of thermal paste deposited directly onto the middle of the CPU

I would believe the manufacturers over youtube and it's hoards of experts ANY day!

Annual thermal compound is our thing, not a necessity but while we have systems down to blow out filters we fit, dust and unfortunately cat hair (5 cats) we clean the RAM, RAM slots and replace thermal compound while it's apart, especially on the laptops because they are not that easy to disassemble.
Every 12 year old kid can now build their own PCs with plug and play, not a thing when I started (anyone remember dip switches on graphics cards and motherboards and needing to know cylinders, heads and sectors on hard drives?). Most of these 12 year olds have a youtube channel and want everyone to subscribe.

I DO use youtube on occasion, my fabrication engineering was done over 20 years ago and I forget some aspects of welding but there's great technical content by people doing it more regularly than I do. It's also over 20 years since I got my fitting and machining qualifications and while I had a lathe for the first 7 years of that time period during and since, we've only recently gotten a lathe and milling machine, a lot I have forgotten, throw in 64 years of age and the old grey mare just ain't what she used to be BUT, I get regular call-outs by local business people (friends) and other friends to fix their computer problems and always have something computer or server related in pieces in the house. I do my friends stuff free and they help me out if required. For me it's an excuse to get out of the house (how sad is that?) Plus two 46" smart TVs in the shed i'll get to fixing one day (and a PBX and, and). Then I have furniture to restore, a Honda CX500 with genuine 39,000 kilometres and my favourite, an Austin Healey Sprite (64 mkII) needing a full ground up restoration. The ability to do just about anything and debilitating migraines every day for the past 50 + years

My host of seemingly unrelated qualifications including electrical and PLCs were meant to go together for the development of robotics and mechatronics, unfortunately my health and finances don't permit me the opportunity to play, add in the cost of the components including hydraulics and pneumatics which I also have qualifications in and a LOT of experience working as a forklift (and car hoist technician) specialising in electrical/electronic forklifts in my younger years but most things are beyond my financial means, and health.
Computers are so easy in comparison!
I mentioned my son, he can program in any language you can name and has networking skills, analytical skills (and equipment) beyond most.

Sadly I spend most of my time in front of an idiot box rotting my brains.

[alpal]

Hi Leo,
thanks for your reply.

It says
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explor...-should-i-use/

Thermal paste is simply a compound that can flow enough to be pressed into the gaps to fill them and as is as conductive as possible to facilitate enough heat transfer between the CPU and the cooler. This is one of the reasons that installing a cooler requires you to wrench it down worryingly tight. This pressure is necessary to squish the thermal paste into those gaps and force the air out.

So I assume he's using a system where he can torque 4 screws down to
get an even and strong pressure across the entire CPU chip?
That is not the case with the 4 cheap plastic fan/heatsink holder clips that
I was forced to use.
I found that my CPU didn't pass the cooling test at 55% CPU and when I added
slightly more heatsink compound it did pass.
I also wasn't relying on a strong force to spread the heatsink compound evenly -
I spread it evenly myself with the spatula provide in the nano diamond kit.


cheers
Allan

[Leo.G (Leo)]

Originally Posted by alpal

Hi Leo,
thanks for your reply.

It says
https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explor...-should-i-use/

So I assume he's using a system where he can torque 4 screws down to
get an even and strong pressure across the entire CPU chip?
That is not the case with the 4 cheap plastic fan/heatsink holder clips that
I was forced to use.
I found that my CPU didn't pass the cooling test at 55% CPU and when I added
slightly more heatsink compound it did pass.
I also wasn't relying on a strong force to spread the heatsink compound evenly -
I spread it evenly myself with the spatula provide in the nano diamond kit.


cheers
Allan

He's actually a large company doing cases, heatsinks and cooling solutions for computers, not so much a "he", a major manufacturer of many things PC build related.


That heatsink retainer system is designed to hold a specified torque on the heatsink.

Originally Posted by Wiki

The company's products include:

• RAM modules for desktop and laptop PCs
• USB flash drives
• ATX and SFX PSUs
• Computer cases
• Pre-built high end gaming PCs
• Liquid CPU and GPU cooling solutions
• Computer fans
• Solid-state drives
• Audio headsets for gaming
• Headset stands
• Gaming monitors
• Webcams and streaming cameras
• Gaming keyboards
• Computer mice
• Mousepads
• Gaming chairs
• Microphones
• Capture cards
• PC components
• Voyager laptop

Since the custom computer industry has experienced an increased interest in products with RGB lighting, Corsair has added this feature to almost all of their product lines. In the gaming industry, Corsair has its biggest share of the market in memory modules (around 44%) and gaming keyboards (around 14%).

Please disregard anything I may have stated in this thread, I clearly have little to NO idea what I'm talking about:


https://i.postimg.cc/3JshZ0r1/IMG-2149-4146x3110-LR.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/WpfThfQQ/IMG-2150-4146x3110-LR.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/nr5JgC4H/IMG-2151-4146x3110-LR.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/HscH59mj/IMG-2152-4146x3110-LR.jpg

For others who may have pets and or dust, yellow and blue chucks make good filters which allow plenty of air flow but restrict hair flow. Cheap enough to replace as required.
We also do this inside some of our network switches, thin filter foam is also great but not so cheap.

[JA]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

Does anyone still build their own Computers? I remember going the monthly computer vendor shows where you could buy any hardware components .. HDD's, RAM, Graphic Cards etc but these are now a thing of the past. Yeah you can buy anything online now but these monthly meets were a great Sunday out.

Ah yes Hans, the joy of the Sunday Computer Swapmeet. It was a semi-regular fixture as we had a few around our area. I've built a few computers over the years and I've collected most of the bits for an upcoming i9 build.

Best
JA

[Leo.G (Leo)]

The i9 series require liquid cooling don't they JA?
I haven't played with anything that late, would like a thread ripper but since I mostly just browse now and don't do much other than occasional image processing I don't think it would make my internet speed any faster.
Have you looked at the cooling route yet?

[JA]

Originally Posted by Leo.G

The i9 series require liquid cooling don't they JA?
I haven't played with anything that late, would like a thread ripper but since I mostly just browse now and don't do much other than occasional image processing I don't think it would make my internet speed any faster.
Have you looked at the cooling route yet?

Hi Leo,

I already have a liquid cooler for it; however, there are big beefy air-coolers also used with it. I just need to find my "goldilocks" case for it and some more matching memory and then I'll have all the bits.

Best
JA

[Leo.G (Leo)]

I've kept my old refrigerator radiator pipes and think I could do something amazing for chilling server gear with it.
We just have to build a little scroll compressor and use the refrigerant from the air duster cans or buy a cylinder of the stuff, R152a (Difluoroethane) from memory, also quite musical when dripped into empty water bottles (plastic) and sealed once the refrigerant boils and evacuates all of the air, we have near a full octave and just a little tuning left for a nice musical set, the xylophone hammer is great to get the sounds).