[geeks] Ahh, the smell of Athlon's burning up

Rick Hamell hamellr at heorot.1nova.com
Wed May 22 13:14:40 CDT 2002


> > 	Exactly... everyone who is knocking AMD chips, never seems to
> > realize that 90% of the time it's the motherboard. I've never had 
> > problems
> > with Asus or Soltek. But Gigabyte, tyan, Shuttle, etc... nothing but
> > problems.
> 
> Ahem.. where exactly do you get a dual motherboard for an AMD that is 
> not Tyan? The one I want is a tyan thunder k7. If you rule out tyan as a 
> cause of problems with AMD, you also rule out dual cpu's. I can 
> understand how a PC box would get overly hot with 2x multighz AMD chips..

	Then you're in the 10% of the problems that aren't related to the
MB. :) Overheating is a problem granted. The problem is that the normal PC
was not meant to efficently cooled, yet another design flaw from the
start. (But then who ever thought in the early 80's that it WOULD be a
problem some day?)
	But, there are tons of products on the market meant to help cool
such systems. You should also choose a case that has large openings in the
front with a fan mounted behind it of course. A 2nd fan behind the CPU's
in the case is a good ideal also. The biggest problem with the PC design
in cooling is the fact that the cards tend to block air flow through the
case. So you either need to remove some of the cards themselves, or get
one of the "slot" fan cards (they work great,) to move those pockets of
air. I've also been forced to use to a dual fan unit that fits in the 5
1/4 drive bay to help create a 2nd airflow through the system via the
Power Supply fan.
	Another good trick is to reverse all the fans so that they blow
INTO the system, but that only works if your environment is a steady
temp, such as a server room.

	Rick



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