BelGarion

True, but as big as it is it aught to be simple to adapt it to a much bigger fan to it to blow off the heat, no? BelGarion

I hear Tyan got cheap and used a wimpy TIM instead of some good ol' thermal paste. Would ya recommend that I remove the heat sink and pry the TIM off and paste it up good with Arctic Silver III? Also having never done it, would the heat sink removal proccess be intuitive? IE you see two bolts, remove both, carefully twist off the heat sink? From there it should be a breeze, having taken off TIMs from heat sinks before putting them on pasted CPUs. Still waiting for the Tachyon to come in. It's somewere between Timbucktu and were I live. Never again from Tiger Direct, by the looks of things it took them 3 days to pull, pack, and ship a single instock item then another day to give UPS the billing info. Ordered it the 14th, wasn't in UPS' hands until the 17th, and the 18th they got the billing info according to the Tracking Number I was given. Anyway. Also, another Q. If, by some unforseeable reason I'd need a new cooling fan for it, how hard would it be to get? Why I ask is I still have haunting memories of my Banshee card from Diamond *shudder!!!* A biannual event was to ship the card back to Diamond for a new fan, it was a single flange design that wasn't buyable. Imagine a single flange with 3 equal distant 'L' braces that dipped down past the blades and over to snag and hold the motor. The fan cupped into the heat sink. Everywhere I looked on and offline I could only find the more normal two flange designs were the second flange is what held the motor. Why I got rid of the Banshee quickly as I could. So what did I get, a Voodoo 3 3000 16mb. But at least it didn't have a fan on it! Thanx all! BelGarion

Same case, different paint job. The Case Arts one is killer. Well, drat, won't let you link direct. Ok, www.directron.com | Cases, Fans, Power | Sort By: Multi-Color | and right at the top should be Green Marble Chieftec MX-01. BelGarion

Case review for Case Arts Painted Chieftec MX-01 Matrix case. Just got the case today. I have been eagerly awaiting this beauty from Directron. Can't call it a little beauty though, its 35lbs of case. Lets see, were do we start? Right from the beginning, were else? UPS man just grunted this baby up to the door. Box is still intact, a little crumpled, but what do you expect from UPS Ground? It's been riding in the back of a truck for a week. Lets get out the ol' screwdriver and cut the shipping tape. For those of you not experienced in shipping, please, use a box cutter on its shortest setting. Cutting too deep can, in some cases, be dangerous to the product. Hmm... The UPS man delivered it to me upside down. Looking at the feet. Oh well. The packing looks solid, and thick form fitted polystyrene to hold it in place. I give a plus to Case Arts on that. Removing the base block of polystyrene I see the case is big. It is also wrapped in plastic, another plus to Case Arts on that, the plastic keeps the paint from being scratched. Removing the case, wasn't too difficult, just need a good grip, as there is not much to hold onto it on the front. Perhaps for them, who find it difficult, get a strong friend to hoist it up so you can tug off the lighter box. Setting the case out its gorgeous, I got the green marble one. You can look at it here: http://www.directron.com/greencasearts html. The pictures don't do it justice it looks better in person. I don't see any flaws in the paint anywhere under the current lighting. Nice Swiss cheese like front bezel, hence the name

Good, then I'll stick to the acetone then, its cheap and easy to get ahold of, and sometimes you can get it in stylish colors too! The current bottle is purple, and I mean the liquid, the bottle is see though. Thanx all, that's what I suspected, so I'll run down this weekend and pick up a tube of Arctic III and wash off the CPU and heat sink and replace Arctic III that's been there since day one though several heat sink swaps. Anyone with suggestions how to get this K6-2 400 down to near ambient tempatures? If the goo swap works I'll be using a copper based micro fin 60mm square heat sink for an AMD XP with a dynatron fan (though I'll look for a 3 pin to 4 pin, see if perhaps the board can't spin the fan up to full speed by plugging it into one of the drive power connectors.) and Arctic Silver III , two case fans (Though someone, not here, suggested the thermal controlled fan should be an exaust, the Stealth the intake, which would make my setup backwards if that's true.) . Though I am also considering the rounded cables if just for the convience. I run SCSI cd and cdrw drives along with ATA hard drives so that's 3 cables, one being really wide (50pin SCSI II) run though out the case. Thanx all. BelGarion

Denatured alcohol? I have been using acetone aka fingernail polish remover. That I can find, were in the heck do you find denatured alcohol? In a denatured bar? Just kidding, but seriously, why specifically denatured alcohol and where do you get it? Thanks! BelGarion

*braces to get razzed about his system* I run a rather simple system compared to most people. It has been a rather long and interesting road. Started out as a pentium 233 socket 7 in a super 7 board. I naturally upgraded to a K6 2 400mhz super 7 chip then started to take a notice in the cpu tempature. Yeah, yeah, it ain't a modern 1+ghz system but it does *most* things I want while I wait for the IRS to get back to me on my tax return. With the origional heat sink and fan from the pentium in a caseless system (imagine a board with wires and cables to stuff sitting near it.) it would run about 50C. This was after rebooting several times to match BIOS to Motherboard Monitor 4.18 while realizing that even then it would be off by a degree or two. But its close enough for government work. So 50C using Arctic Silver III paste on this aluminum block with a low fin density. We are talking 12 fins only. I put the system into a case and punch a 92mm hole in the front of it to feed a temp. variable Antech 80mm intake fan and 80mm Stealth rear out take fan. It dropped it to 40C or so. This is good, but not good enough, its chilly now here in California and the room is not airconditioned. Summer time it will be its usual brutal 90F to over 100F somedays. I worry that will not be enough to handle these high temp extremes and want to go cooler if I can. Especially after hearing with heat sink and fan people can achive 38C max on a P4 or AMD Athlon. So I swapped out the heat sink for one rated for AMDs. I didn't change the paste, just added a little more and smoothed it out. It ran a little worse, up to 43C or so. So I swapped in the origional again, and again adding a little more silver thermal paste to the cpu to replace what came off on the heat sink and smoothing it out. Now my origional heat sink is running 3C hotter. Should I have washed off the CPU and replaced the paste each time I replaced the heat sink? I washed off the heat sink as I didn't want silver paste all over creation after I removed it but the paste usually remains in all the microscopic holes with in the metal. I can't think of too many other reasons why it would. And again, just got a copper based Dynatron 60mm cooler in my quest to force it cooler and it, like the aluminum pentium cooler, it is running at 43C in a chilly room. Actually it just topped 45C according to MBM 4. I did remember to lap in the silver paste into the base of the new heat sink and added enough paste to the cpu to compinsate for what came up on the heat sink and resmoothed it out level. Help? Thank you all for your time. BelGarion