Well! There is a third way!

[bigben2k]

He'll have plenty of blocks to test...

[jaydee]

Originally Posted by pHaestus

I think Jaydee pretty much solved that issue with the engraving shop suggestion?

I actually looked into it locally. One place still has the the equipment to do it (they bought it from us in fact) but they don't have the tooling and don't want to attempt it anyway. The other 2 engraving shops switched to laserable products and phased out rotary engraving all together.

Even if you were to get the thing grooved the process to properly set the probe would be difficult for even an advanced DIY'er. At least that is what it looks to me on the Intel doc's.

Anyway my interest in working on comps is pretty much gone. Not just cooling wise. I am finding myself annoyed every time someone asks to help them with their comp anymore.

Maybe life is just catching up to me.

[TerraMex]

Anyway my interest in working on comps is pretty much gone. Not just cooling wise. I am finding myself annoyed every time someone asks to help them with their comp anymore.

After 20 years in front of one, I'm too.
I think it's just saturation.

[Marci]

Yep, same here... sadly they're a necessity tho...

[BillA]

computers as fun ?
never, I am so incompetent that the guy who fixes mine charges me $50 extra if I have removed a side panel

just a tool that I cannot do without
my wife needed a 'better' computer so I bought a $500 HP pos from Wallmart
another error, slower than justice

hi ho

[unreal]

I wont lie, this thread isnt what I expected when I clicked on it!

My views are that watercooling is just becoming more commercial, and as pH says - many people buy kits now so that is what people want to know about.

Anyways I like it here, deffinately the best watercooling forum on the web, simply because you guys know what your on about

[TerraMex]

computers as fun ?
never, I am so incompetent that the guy who fixes mine charges me $50 extra if I have removed a side panel

Fun yes. games, porn, etc. thank <insert your deity here> for the internet.
patience for the hassles (mainly hardware problems), not anymore.
Used to build systems, do the whole "IT" thing. Brrr.

[gmat]

Originally Posted by pHaestus

What people really need (when I say people I mean enthusiasts in general and not just Procooling regulars) are guides on how to best mix and match components for their needs. A well-written article that compared all of the different reservoir/filling solutions and loop placement of them would be more USEFUL than 100 more waterblock reviews. (...)

Ex-actly !
And that would set ProCooling apart (and ahead of the pack), no doubt.
Think system integration, not full-DIY builds.

[gmat]

Originally Posted by BillA

gmat
for my ENTIRE stint at Swiftech (from 2003) I argued to build a passive cooling system
Gabe forbade it, I could not get even $600 (my development estimate)
no vision, no progress

look at the success of Zalman, focused on 1 parameter
Alienware is a company who could do so effectively

And Gabe is so wrong on this There is STILL a place on market for a strong *all copper* passive solution. The Reserator (to name it) was a success even with the online press showing it didnt perform. IMHO Swiftech has now a strong brand name recognition, just as Zalman, and if they decide to package a full system with a purpose (ultra quietness ? uber overclocking ?) people will flock to it, just because of the brand name.

Alienware and Apple were the only ones to sell a watercooled system to the general public, and see the exposure in the online world they had, just from the hype it generated ("OMG they're putting water in a computer, look at how it works") - hype = free advertisement.

[pauldenton]

Originally Posted by Marci

He'll be back when summer ends... assuming he's the stereotypical sportsbike rider... personally, come snow, sleet or rain... I'm out on the bike (or would be if could afford tyres - circumstances rather shoddy at the moment)

afaik the weather in Melbourne is unlikely to drive him off his bike...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/c...ml?tt=TT003020

[Etacovda]

lol, indeed

even wellingtons weather wouldnt come close to that, and melbournes a tropic zone compaired to wellywood...

[bobo5195]

I’ve been noticing around the web and the world in general decline in buzz for computers. Forums seem to be getting smaller, less stuff seems to be coming out. There is a growing band of people certainly at the top end who know a lot of things, that PC’s are generally fast enough and they are not improving very fast these days as well. To be honest short of a few intensive tasks like games, CAD/CAM, sciency stuff, media encoding etc there is no need for anything faster than a p3 1ghz. Prices for something a little bit faster have gone up exponentially (I’m thinking SLI here). This was always the case to a certain extent but you can now see more engineering effort into getting the best, dual video cards, quad channel ram etc. As Bob Colwell pointed out in his presentation there is not really much left in faster CPU designs all the easy stuff has been done. Process scaling is hitting a little wall and heat has become a major issue, so things aren’t going to get faster. With out exponential increases in speed there is very little much more you can do with computers.

In cooling, coolers have got a lot bigger and a lot better. Looking at a modern thermalright cooler and I can’t see much of a way to do it better. In essence it is very close to a water-cooling setup, can dissipate a shed load of heat and can do it quietly. Waterblocks have similarly plateaued a little it would be hard to get anything much better there. Rads maybe there is a little optimising to do but things are good. As such pure performance has given way to aesthetics, bling(which I count as bad design but looks flash) cost/efficiency trade offs and silencing. As people have lost faith with computers time and effort which someone is willing to put in to make their computer fast and a little difference has fallen.

However there is a big but to all this dead endness. People like things silent and it is extremely hard to make a top end dual core, dual video card silent on air. Also water cooling is getting quite refined and cheaper. It is beginning to optimise for cost as swiftechs apogee shows. This could well be the best time for water-cooling there is ever going to be. You have ultra high power densities in small computer cases with low noise as a requirement. This is the stuff that water-cooling is good at. Watercooling should make case design better as you have to worry less about heat so can do something a little difference. There is currently a big hole in the market for a case that passively water cooling rad in itself. This kind of thing could be made cheaply and would completely kill a restorator as it does not need a giant phallus by your computer case.

Similarly if CPU’s have plateued then OCing becomes more attractive. A OCed A64 from a year odd back can still hold its own against the fastest cpu today. A good solution has already been out on the market. TEC’s with a temperature cut off to prevent below dew point cooling (condensation). This allows maybe an extra 100Mhz with only a little extra effort. More importantly it means that your waterblock design can be cheap because the TEC helps with c/w numbers.

As for what we experts or at least slightly better educated geeks can do on this forum there is in fact quite a lot. Less going on is a good thing for in-depth analysis. The systemcooling review of the apogee is a prime example it took time and covers everything. There is no way that could happen if there was a fast moving market and such. As things get more complicated knowledge becomes more important and the details are magnified. The apogee case is an example of that (and I hope this is not going to start a flame war by saying this). The apogee does perform on the same level as a storm with a normal IHSed CPU, not because it’s a very good cooler but because the I H S numbs performance so it is good enough. To find this out you need to be smarter than the average bear. As a forum there are a number of things that still need to be done before we can write the book and lay everything to rest. Firstly a good flow calculator (LHG v2 approximator) needs to come out for one, that allows DIYers to compete with kit solutions effectively. If a person at home can optimise then why get a kit. I enter what I need, a few clicks and bang cheapest solution for the price comes up. Should be able to beat a kit every time. There are still some tricks to be done on waterblocks and the overall design of watercooling kit so I would not worry about things going dead.

End miss-spelled crap grammar rant

[Marci]

Well said - agree on all counts... xbox360 covering everything basic (web, media, games), mmorpg subscriptions swallowing the hardware upgrade & cooling budget (pocket money), all PCs are left for is specialist tasks or universality of one machine for all for those who can be bothered learning to use it... or for office duties.

[BillA]

well . . . .
a 5gig CPU in its second rev ?
a cooling soln with a theta of 0.04 ?
not possible ?
already done guys, no I have nothing to say

never make assumptions

EDIT
yes Marci, an X-box is more than enough for the consumer mkt

[TerraMex]

never make assumptions

Surprisingly ontopic:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilber...-20060216.html
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilber...-20060217.html

just to point out the obvious,
there is a very large difference,
let us eat more cpu processing and memory,
or be efficient in programming. The latter is (hopefuly) starting to catch up.

PS " End miss-spelled crap grammar rant" -> no grammar nazis here.

PPS: laptop industry is tramping the desktop one.

[BillA]

way cool TM

I think that speach recognition will necessiate FAST processors with LOTS of RAM
this is the killer app
I use Dragon 8

[TerraMex]

used a very old version, with a Galaxy (from Aztech), long time ago.
fun, but not that useful, and portuguese is a really bad language for voice recognition.

on side notes also, celeron cedar mill? 5Ghz, not that complicated.
Ok, so it's a celeron, but not too shabby for an under $100 cpu.

[BillA]

Originally Posted by BillA

never make assumptions

jeez, 10 char

EDIT
as an aside, those languages not amenable to speach recognition may disappear
??

[TaTs]

Originally Posted by BillA

EDIT
as an aside, those languages not amenable to speach recognition may disappear
??

The reason being english is very easy compared to other languages, say portuguese...

_______
TaTs

[BillA]

to what do you refer ?
grammar is programming
phonetics ?

[BGP Spook]

Originally Posted by BillA

EDIT
as an aside, those languages not amenable to speach recognition may disappear
??

Like how there are 12 different ways to pronounce the word "mao" in Chinese each with a different meaning.

Add mispronunciation, dialect, speech impediments and it gets very tricky fast.

[BillA]

have you used one of these programs ?
I have gone through 4 of them
the initial 'training' deals with much of this, context is used also
because they are not perfect does not define their ultimate limits
but the cyberworld will define linguistic survival, as I see it

[bobo5195]

I use dragon too, its alright but i can type faster and more accurately than it can so never bothereed about getting it fast. Besides having housemates kinda kills it (too much for him to use properly) and i always end up doing most of my posting will pissed anyway so probably wouldn't work.

[gmat]

Bill, Chinese (and S.E.Asia derivatives) may be one of the toughest challenges for language recognition. Minimal variations in phonemes and ligatures lead to totally different meanings. On the opposite side Japanese, Russian or English (or even German) are very easy with clearly separated phonemes and unambiguous meanings. I dont see any of those languages about to disappear anytime soon. Portuguese for instance is spoken in a lot of countries... And Internet is more multi-linguistic than you may think
Back on topic, killer apps are games ! They require AI, the most CPU hungry process by far, which always get tuned (and tuned *down*) so it doesnt hog all the resources. There are some AI engines like connectivist and heuristic engines (neural networks, genetic algorithms) that are the future of AI, but require simply too much power to be used in real time yet. Of course AI can be used in speech recognition as well :P

[Long Haired Git]

I like CPU power to allow me to be lazy.
Like when working out a formulae to match the PQ graph in my approximator, I could programme something to do clever matrix manipulations.
Instead, I do lazy matrix manipulations and brute force my way to a solution.
It can take several minutes!
At work we still don't have enough grunt to do what we want. Just doing the ETL and calc of NPV and VAR for the swaps in my "pissy little bank in a backwater of the pacific ocean" takes hours and hours. More POWWWEERRR!!!