white noise

I got my highest score yet on the 3DMark06 benchmark today…5298. My previous high was 5100 so this was a nice surprise. I haven’t done much to improve performance. I did dump Norton for AVG, made a couple graphics tweaks (new drivers and OC tweaks), and of course added that new CPU cooler. I’m not the type to turn off every possible service to maximize the benchmark. I test under regular old gaming conditions.

I upgraded the CPU cooler in my machine this past weekend. I went with the Zalman cnps9500led. It’s 530 grams of copper love with a 92mm led fan. It’s cetainly the largest cooler I could have added – just a few millimeters of clearance.

I removed the AMD stock heatsink and fan (which didn’t feel any lighter to me) and cleaned up the old thermal compound with Artic Clean remover and purifier solutions. After appling a new bed of Artic Silver 5, installation was a breeze – probably even easier than the stock heatsink I’d say – just two screws hold it down to the mb retension bracket. From looking at the instructions, installing the cooler on other CPUs would involve siginificantly more effort.

I wasn’t thrilled with the two blue leds built into the fan, so before installing I set off to replace them with a couple red leds. I stripped the fan down as far as I wanted to risk and still couldn’t get to where I could unsolder the existing leds. Deciding not to press my luck with prying anything more apart I decided to leave it as is. Luckily the blue leds are not the usual super bright variety and don’t actually look too bad. The result is a nice purplish glow over the cpu.

So how’s it perform? A bit better – but maybe not drastically different. While encoding/burning DVD with Nero, both cores go to 100% for several minutes (at least a half hour). With the stock cooler the CPU temp rose to 54 degrees celcius. The typical idle temp before the upgrade was 47 degrees depending on ambient. With the new cooler, idle hovers around 42 although the CPU still briefly hits 54 degrees when encoding a DVD at full tilt. I have to say I’m shocked not to see any imporvement on the high end, however I did notice the CPU very quickly cooled to 44 degrees after the load easied off. I also have to keep in mind that (a) the processor is overclocked by 10% and (b) the thermal layer hasn’t really had enough time to optimumly bond yet. Another aspect I must mention is that the new cooler is MUCH quieter. So when you add up the lower temps (at low to moderate usage), the faster thermal recovery (after high usage), and the lower noise I’m still very happy with the upgrade.

So with my Roadrunner connection and my computer at opposite ends of the house and a floor apart, I haven’t been getting the best wireless throughput. After fiddling endlessly with antenna positioning, channel selection, and so on I decided I just needed MORE POWER (cue Tim Allen’s monkey grunt).

So I took down my (damn unique!) Sony router and access point and popped for a brand-freakin-new Belkin N1 router. That’s right N1, baby – none of that pre-N stuff for me. It wasn’t cheap, but nothing I buy is (hey, I’m lamenting here, not bragging!). It’s a slick little unit I must say. I spent nearly a full day hooking it all back up, reconfiguring everything to WPA instead of my previous WEP (that was long overdue), and positioning antennas and such. Netstumbler was a big help in optimizing the setup and in knowing which channels the neighbors are on so I could avoid them.

I went from a “good”, occasional 48/36/24bps to a pretty constant “excellent”, 54bps connection. The lag in online games isn’t entirely gone, but really damn good. My in-game pings are back down to sub-50 for the most part. All this and I didn’t even upgrade the cheap usb wireless adapter on the desktop to a new one with MIMO. Nice to know there’s more room for improvement (if I ever want to spend another $100 that is).

Plus if you want to pop some corn, you only need to hold the bag in the air.