Updates to the new desktop at Daniel Spisak on Technology

Recently my new SilenX fans and 5.25″ bay fan rheobus controller showed up from the guys at FrozenCPU.com. These new SilenX fans kick major butt. First of all they are far quieter then the stock Silverstone 60mm and 80mm fans. I now have two 60mm fans installed in the case, one for the vertical blowhole over the PCI-E card slots and one in the horizontal blowhole directly over the card retention brackets blowing out the back of the case. I also replaced the 80mm fan cooling the hard drive bracket with a blue LED SilenX 80mm fan which makes for a nice blue glow look through the ventilation grill on the side of the system. Click on any of the photos below for the full 6MP resolution photos (big! 2MB+ files).

The only problem I ran into with the variable speed fan rheobus controller was that it was slightly wider then the 5.25″ bay I had free on the case. I ended up having to bust out the wooden block and sandpaper down the edges of the wrap-around plastic sleeve on the Silverstone case. Additionally I also had to use a metal file on the retention flaps for the controller to shave off some excess metal to get the controller to fit. Eventually it did go in, but not before the plastic retention sleeve cracked in one of the corners from over stressing. I also replaced the interal IDE ribbon cable with a nice shielded rounded cable as you will see in the photos below.

At this point now, all that remains to be done to the system is to upgrade to a modular PSU at a later point when I am ready to purchase an ATI R600 based DX10 PCI-E graphics card, provided the retail card will fit in my case or not. That still hasnt been resolved to my satisfaction yet and it looks like I have to wait till April for the card to get released to find out for certain.

I also went ahead and took the time with the system open to install the new 500GB hard drive I had gotten for Christmas along with a spare older D-Link 802.11g PCI WiFi card that will work well for wireless network sniffing work.

Adding in all of the fans and switching over to the SilenX fans has had a good impact on the system overall. It is now quieter but more importantly the system temperatures seem to have improved as well. Right now the CPU runs 45C at idle which is higher then it used to be. The ICH hub chip however runs at 51C which is 25C lower then it used to be! So overall the temps seem a little higher, but overall decent enough. This is also with a second hard drive in the system now and slightly less cable cluttering up the airflow inside. Its still not exactly ideal but its good for now until I get the modular PSU for the system.

About the Author

Daniel Spisak was born from the fiery depths of fusion and now roams the pale blue dot known as Earth. I obtained my bachelors degree in Computer Science from UC Irvine at the end of 2007.

I am also involved in technology & security consulting firms as well as being a freelance technology writer. I also contribute to Jerry Pournelle's website and Chaos Manor Reviews. Additionally I am also a freelance photographer as well and you can find my photos either on my own personal gallery or up at my Flickr account or on Zivity.

This blog is one of the main locations where I do my writing, which is then automatically sent to my LiveJournal, VOX, and MySpace accounts. I can also be found on a variety of social networking and microblogging sites like Pownce, Twitter, Brightkite, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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