Judas

Just to give you a few ideas about this machine...

First it's a prescot based machine... aka the damn thing is one of the orginals which would mean it runs rediculiously hot.

Not to mention that dell with all it's brilliance doesn't provide ANY form of being able to read the temperatures of the freaking POS. They put a single large 120mm fan near the front which is apparently controlled by some form of temperature reading or thermal control (which yes would suggest a sensor but after dealing with about 8 different programs in an attempt to find a reading, none of them have worked, even dell says no one can get a reading according to thier support).

This machine sounds like a A380 taking off, i haven't heard a computer sound so loud before, nor vibrate like this.

The machine came in last saturday from a business which coinicidently is a lumber place, all around this machine, saw dust is flying. Great hey? Sap and all that fun stuff.

The reason for the machine to be brought in wasn't due to not working, but just being slow as hell and probably dirty as hell. True...

When i first fired it up, it consistantly ran loudly, and seemed very slow. Started alot of the windows cleanup procedures i usually do. that sped it up a bit, but even when it wasn't doing anything, it was still quite loud. (course not as loud as when a virus scan is being ran or whatever which kinda confused me).

I tear the thing apart as much as dell will allow without breaking anything, thier brilliance in this case designed never ceased to amaze me. Just to get at the main fan reqired removing the cpu from the motherboard and dismantling more of the machine. Rediculious. I didn't hate dell as much as i do now just due to thier case design.

Anyways, a number of hours later blowing out the case, having to get out more tools to get some of the grime off the heatsinks and fan not to mention other parts of the case. (way to many nooks and crannies)

Clean up the cpu heatsink, apply some thermal paste, check everything over, and fire it up, Emediately the first thing i notice is that the fan speed has come down considerably, good GREAT, the heatsink even feels much cooler to the touch, ah much better. Get into windows, and things are running far faster. Still when things are starting to load or antivirus is running scans or your defragmenting or anything of the sort, the fan speed hits at least.... 7000-8000 or higher RPM... it's utterly rediclious. And what i DON'T understand is why when the cpu doesn't feel any warmer to the touch, and nothing appears to be running any slower. Check everything over, seems fine, do a check on the internet, yup seems to be the norm for the computer, even dell support says "thats just the way it is".... oh well.

drop the machine off for them, they use it a total of 4 days, suddenly the thing won't start in the morning. Odd.

I receive it, plug it in, fire it up, no problems, works great, ran my countless stress tests..... and then i noticed something.

Under full CPU load, the fan doesn't speed up all that much. However doing memtest it would speed up more, and when doing file transfers, it would go through the roof. So in interest, i pull the side off the case durring the file transfer and lightly touch each of the motherboard chips or heatsinks.... southbridge, hmmm seems fine, a bit hot to the touch, but tollerable....... northbridge however, i couldn't keep my finger on it, it's freaking hot as hell. Stopped the file transfer tests, let the fan come down, and then touched it again, still hot but barely tollerable.


So i may be jumping to a conclusion, but this would suggest that possibly the northbridge chip is getting far to warm and causing the fan to speed up NOT the cpu..... which would then suggest that instability (which i haven't found any) could be caused by this alone. I'm still a little baffled by the "computer won't start" issue mind you as i can't reproduce the problem, it could be localized at thier place. But this northbridge concerns me. And the way dell mounted the heatsink, i don't think i can tear it off without damaging the freaking board to try and reseat it or clean it up.

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Tyrsonswood

Can you add an extra fan near the northbridge to give it more air? Might take the edge off the temps.

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Judas

na... dell kinda designed it with those super wide flimmsy fins.... and the mounts are those spring load "jumplike" pins.... i tried mounting a fan on there to see if it'd help.. but it didn't seem to affect anything...

either way bad design..... the idea would have worked if they would have finished the concept...

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Judas

well after having it for a bit.... seems to be working like before.. only now it was constantly at a jet engine speed...

more investigating and i got an idea.... went over and loaded into the bios..... dell in thier brilliance by default sets the intel speed step to disabled..... while TECHNICALLY no one should HAVE to have this featured enabled to get some peace.... anyways.... enabled it... and it's "appears" to be quieter... for the time being... still it's a concern.... it just shouldn't run like that imo.

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