> I can't help wondering if you could do away with the hdd altogether, > e.g. booting the thing once and for all from floppies. The P/S fan > solution I've posted before -- if it's an old and wimpy machine and > you're daring you could maybe try even more extreme things like nuking > the fan altogether. (Check your household fire insurance?) Along the > same lines, you could try disabling the CPU fan as well if you have > one. I ran my PIII-500E for a few hours with the CPU fan unplugged and > it didn't even blink. It seems to me that there is a bit of room for > trial and error here, especially if you can afford it: if the CPU > overheats, the machine will crash. Whether this damages the CPU > permanently I don't know, any electronics types here that know > anything about this? i've been meaning to ask you about you suggested power-supply quietening technique. you said you moved the power supply outside the case, in order to allievate the heat buildup inside the p/s case. yet on at least my machines, the powersupply has ventilation holes on the inside of the computer case, which to my understanding are used to draw heat from inside the case. it's all very well having dual cpu fans on my athlon drawing heat away from the chip. but without the powersupply fan, this heat remains in the box, rising the ambient temperature and thus counteracting the effect of the cpu fan - and lowering the life of your chip. on the next note, you said the chip will crash if it gets too hot. if the heat rises quickly then sure the chip will probably malfunction. but the real risk of overclocking is the indetectable changes. in a process called ... well i forget what it's called :) the tiny tracks on the chip will melt due to being operated above their stated temperature, and then they condense elsewhere. this can occur over the period of weeks to months, and by the time you notice something is wrong, the chip is unsalvageable. that is why o/c'd chips often can't be clocked back down again. cheers -- Damien <bitwise@repose.cx>
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