Re: changing the fan cooler on my video card

attilathehun1 wrote:
Man, it's 8:15 PM here and I live between El Segundo and Hawthorne 2 miles from Manhattan Bch. I'm burning up. I have my shirt off and a towel around my neck and I'm sweating like a pig. LOL

It is *perfect* here right now. My A.C. has been off for a week, T=72F inside
the house. Zero energy bill for that. Too bad it is raining like a bitch.

Anyways, I've abandoned my list for the day or two because newegg.com is out of the RAM stick I want. I put down that I want 184 pin, DDR 333, 512 mb stick, and 7 different sticks came up. The only one that quoted that it was unbuffered. It was out of stock and I put in a notification in to tell me by e-mail if it comes in. I said I would buy the items in my cart when the stick was available. The stick was the last one on the list, I guess on purpose newegg did that. Put it last on purpose.

You don't have to be that restrictive in your choices. You can purchase
PC3200 (DDR400) RAM if you want. What you want, is RAM that doesn't
say "registered". Likely there are lots of sticks that would work.

Ok, oh and by the looks of the VF900-Cu VGA cooler that I saw from your picture that I don't think it will work on my card, unless I use the old metal frame and plop the fan onto it. Maybe a water cooled system would work better? Now that the card is bare of a cooler.

I think the VF900-Cu would work, but fitting the tiny heatsinks on the RAM
is the hard part. I bet the guy who helped you remove the screws on the
current one, could fit it.

Water is just asking for trouble - it takes some experience in selecting
fitting, hoses, etc, to get a water tight build. And accidents happen - one
guy, put his water pump on a separate switch from his computer. His girlfriend
was over for a visit, turned on the PC, but forgot the pump. His system was
fried because no water was flowing to make the cooling work. You need more
build experience, before going with water. Not recommended for first-timers.

Getting onto what I did today. I started building the new PC that I am upgrading my Dell 8300. Well upgrading isn't exactly what you'd call it. Everything will be new except the hard drive, optical drive and floppy drive. Maybe even the floppy drive will be new. I was having second thoughts about how I installed the front panel connectors. You know the small connectors that you have to push down onto to those small row of pins on the mobo, that you can barely see. The ones on the outside I pointed outware towards the ends of the mobo, and the ones on the inside of the mobo I pointed inward towards the middle of the mobo. In other words, the labels that you can read what the connector says are pointed inwards on the inside pins and the connectors on the outside closest to the edge of the mobo, those labels are pointing towards outer most edge. Well, there are only two options, inside pins and outside pins, I think you get my drift. Do you think that is the correct arrangment?

The diagram in the manual is pretty clear. The PANEL header has two rows of
pins. Each 1x2 connector with twisted pair of wires, goes to pins in the same
row (horizontal). The LEDs are polarized. If the LED doesn't light up when
you run the system, simply rotate the connector 180 degrees and try again.
The SPKR cable has two wires, fitted into pins 1 and 4 of the 1x4 plastic
shroud. The speaker, reset and power switches are not polarized, and it
doesn't matter which way they're turned (+ and -). The LEDs matter, and the
+ and - are significant, but no damage done it they're plugged in backwards.
Just rotate them and plug them in the other way, and they'll light up. There
should be a total of five twisted pair cables to connect. The only one that
is essential, is the PWR switch, to turn the computer on and off. The computer
would work without the rest of that stuff connected.

1x2 1x2 1x4
PWR PWR CASE
<-- LED --> <-- SW --> <-------- SPKR ------->
X X X X X X X X


X X X X X
<-- 1x2 --> <-- 1x2 --> No
HDD Reset Connection
LED Switch



There was also another thing that bothered me, I was using a screw driver to screw in the motherboard screws that has been magnetized. I know not to get a magnet close to the hard drive, but what about the motherboard screws? I hope I didn't blow it by using that screwdriver.

The motherboard is not sensitive to magnets. The hard drive isn't either.
It takes a very strong magnet to damage the hard drive. The most sensitive
thing for magnets, is one of those old CRT monitors with the vacuum tube,
as you can throw off the color purity with magnets nearby. That is why
computer speakers are "shielded", so they won't upset a CRT.

The hard drive has magnets inside it. Powerful magnets. So if magnets
were going to affect the hard drive, they'd have to be stronger than
the ones used on the actuator. Pictures here.

http://www.computer-hardware-explained.com/hard-drive-magnets.html

<<snip>>

There is another 2 front panel connectors that are much thicker cables and it says it goes for EAR mike. There are 2 plugs one says AZALIA and the other says AC.97. Now the thick black cable goes directly to the
> AZALIA plug and then it has an offshoot plug that says AC.97. There are
> 2 plugs coming off 1 black cable. On the mobo though, there is only one
connector, a F_Audio connector. So, I've plugged the AZALIA plug into
> the F_Audio mobo connector. These are coming off of the front panel,
> that's why I guess you see F_Audio, front audio.

The Azalia (HDAudio) connector is fine. Each connector is a 2x5 with room
for 10 pins, but only 9 pins are on the motherboard. The missing pin is
for keying, to guide insertion the correct way.

The Azalia has plug sensing signals, which is the difference from AC'97.
Note the instructions in the manual, regarding "Disable front panel jack detection".
You want to leave your check box unticked, as you've used the Azalia plug and
not the AC'97 one. So your jack sense will work, and there is no need to
Disable it.

There are some other plugs, now I'm not talking about the front panel regular connectors, I already spoke about those already. These plugs are some I've not encountered before. There are a bunch of connectors, well not a bunch, it's 1 thick black cable, like all the others I've been asking about, that has a nine different 1 prong connector plugs that I don't know wtf to do with. There is an LPT labels double row of prongs, that I think is used for a printer?

LPT header would be for a parallel (printer) port. You'd need a PCI slot cover
and cable assembly to use it.

There is another set of unused prongs that say COMA that are used for I don't know wtf ?

Serial port RS232. Again, you'd need a PCI slot cover and cable assembly to use it.
Serial port was used with modems at one time.

Now this sprout of plugs say IEEE 1394 and I have no place so far to plug them in that is familiar to me.

You don't have a 1394 chip onboard, so the front panel 1394 jack will be unused.
Leave the cable unconnected.

The motherboard is a GIGABYTE S-series Ultra Durable 2/ Dynamic Energy Saver that supports Intel Core 2 Multi-Core Processors. It's a model GA-EP35C-DS3R motherboard. The tower is a Thermaltake P/N: VA8003BWS case. Oh no, it says ATX motherboard, BTX upgraded kit (option). ATX is that Intel supported or AMD supported? If it's AMD then I'm off to a bad start. I think I have an Intel chip and an Intel motherboard? Well, here goes with the chip, it's a Intel Core 2 Duo, that answers half the question, Dual Core DESKTOP. I'm pretty sure the mobo is an Intel chipset because I got it from newegg.com and the motherboard came up as wanted accessories or the chip came up as wanted accessories. Either or I forget which I ordered first and then added on. Ok, I think this message is getting a bit longwinded. Any more help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, attilathehun1

ATX is the dominant form factor for desktops. Both AMD and Intel motherboards
are made to fit that form factor. BTX was used in some prebuilt computers,
and at this point, I'm not sure of its official status (dead or alive).

Paul
.

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