quiet at last
i woke up today to find out that the thermaltake cpu cooler i had ordered from mittoni a few days ago had arrived by courier.. it was the ‘silenttower‘, and it lives up to its name - it was a tower indeed! (see picture - the big blue thing is the silenttower) i was afraid it wouldn’t fit into the computer case because it projected so far from the motherboard - i think a gap of only a few centimeters exists now between the case and the top of the cpu cooler..
anyway, installation was pretty straightforward although quite involved.. had to pull the motherboard out of the computer, remove the stock intel fan, clean up the mess that the intel thermal compound left behind, and then install the new fan using nice new micronised silver thermal compound from arctic silver..
and then obviously i had to take it for a test run.. the computer switched on without too much of a hiccup, apart from windows not liking usb devices plugged into different sockets coming out of hibernation.. apart from that, this thermaltake cpu cooler lived up to the other part of its name - silent! it’s a far cry compared to the dodgy intel stock cooler..
anyway, on stress tests with video encoding and also, of course, playing half-life 2, the cooler performed fantastically.. on a warm day like today, the temperature stayed under 50 degrees with only a whisper of sound coming from the cooler - compared to the blaring motorbike noise that the intel cooler used to make.. supposedly cooling performance will improve once the silver thermal compound properly melts in or something - it’ll be even cooler then! (in more ways than one)
okay anyway, i have a headache now from playing half-life 2 to ‘test’ out the new cooler.. so there goes my productivity for the day.. maybe i should have installed it at night.. oh well..
all up the cooler plus thermal compound plus delivery was only $61 - a small price to pay for great cooling performance and the ability to actually hear yourself think when using the computer.. i know next time i build a computer i’ll be looking to put one of these after market coolers in instead of the crappy intel one..