Alright, I’ve had to do this twice now, and it’s taken a few extra minutes of annoying-ness each time to figure it out, so I’ll put it here. Hopefully it helps someone else. Yes, there’s some background. Skip to the last paragraph if you just want the answer. Read more…
Upon installing Vista x64 on an ASUS P5B-VM SE, there were a couple devices in Device Manager that were missing drivers. The first was for the Attansic L1 Network Card, for which ASUS had a driver on their site. The 2nd was an unknown device. Right clicking and going to Properties showed the location as “Intel(R) ICH8/ICH8R Family LPC Interface Controller – 2810″.
Thinking that maybe the Intel Chipset INF package might have the driver, I installed it. No such luck. Finally, I did a search which brought me to a couple other pages, the biggest help being from a post by d.chatten on ocforums.com, although a hardforum.com post was helpful as well. As it turns out, it’s for a device called the ATK0110 which may have something to do with legacy I/O.
Regardless, the link in the post was broken (asus vs ASUS), so I browsed to Read more…
I recently bought an Intel Quad Core Q6600. I’ve been doing a lot of Video Encoding for the Apple TV, and while a fine chip, the E2140 just wasn’t cutting it time-wise for quality encodes.
I grabbed some pics of the process with my new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W35 (if the blurry pics from my previous posts made your eyes bleed, these should help alleviate the pain). I also got idle/load temperatures both before & after.
Part 1: Lapping
1A: The Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (lapped using sandpaper against an already-lapped waterblock small enough to fit between the mounting pegs)
Here are a few pics of what this thing looks like when you pull it out of the box (click the thumbnail to open a larger image):
You can see they include thermal interface material on the heatsink, which I’ve read is MX-1 – apparantly it’s pretty decent stuff. Naturally, i took it off (rubbing alcohol worked well enough). Pay close attention to the 4th picture. You can see the heatsink surface is pretty rough – it’s much rougher than the Intel Stock Cooler. You can notice it in the 3rd as well. Not that it’s necessarily a *huge* deal. Smooth would be preferable, but the more important question is “is the heatsink FLAT?”. We’ll find out soon enough, time to start lapping the heatsink…. Read more…
It’s been well known for some time now that heatsinks aren’t always perfectly smooth and flat. Sometimes the machining process used when making a heatsink leaves much to be desired. A poor surface means poor contact with the CPU, which translates to less effective cooling, and thus, higher temperatures. “Lapping” the heatsink is a technique that has become common practice with modders and overclockers. It’s generally accepted that a properly lapped heatsink performs better than one that isn’t, except in the case where the heatsink was already quite smooth and flat.
But what about the IHS (integrated heat spreader) on a CPU? Read more…
