Philip Webb wrote:
Hardware problems come up here occasionally & experiences deserve swapping.
Gentoo involves much exercise of the CPU, sometimes making it sweat a lot.
My AMD 2500+ CPU (installed 2003) has been getting hotter & the fan slower.
Here in the summer heat of S Ontario, where my workroom is >= 25 C ,
it had been running at a steady 64 C for a couple of weeks (was 55 C ).
When I tried to emerge GCC 4.1.1 , it reached > 75 C & the box died;
several attempts, the same auto switch-off. No fans to fit at the store
& all available CPUs are 64-bit nowadays, ie build another machine.
So I opened up the box, removed the fan & the heat-sink,
blew & wiped all the dust away, smeared on some silicon heat-conductor
carefully kept from the original package 3 years ago, put it back together.
Now the fan is running at 4400 RPM (was 4000 ) & the CPU is at 51 C ,
rising only to 58 C while successfully compiling GCC 4.1.1 .
Hopefully, I won't need to build a new machine till well into 2007 .
I recently replaced the fans and heat sinks on my dual opterons to bring
the temp down, I was also very much trying to bring the nose level down
from the fans.
I used 2 copper heat fans with heat pipes from thermaltake, and put some
90 mm fans on each cpu/heatsink.
I also put a new case around them to improve air flow.
You want more air being pulled out of your box then going in.
I manually monitor and control the fan speed and with the new setup I
have been able to get the processor fans rpms down to 1800-2000, a real
help to reduce noise, with the temp averaging about 46c when idle.
When I have done something, perhaps emerge some program, whatever, temp
goes to about 50-52c.
Check the specs on your processor to see what the operating temp range
is so you do not burn things up.
Hope it helps,
Sean
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
