Hardware Issues

Hardware Issues No, not with the web site (although we were down a bit due to ATT Broadband problems.) I've been working on my home system for a bit this week and found a few unhappy issues. First, when I actually examined the Front Side Bus heatsink/fan on my Abit motherboard, I was disturbed to find it hardly even touching the chip. I removed it, put in Arctic Silver thermal compound (they had previously put a tiny dab of some white compound, not good) and replaced the assembly. Seems to help stability a bit. I also found that my GeForce 2 was getting ridiculously (i.e. burn-your-finger) hot, and the stock fan assembly on that was completely useless. Replaced it entirely with a Thermaltake Blue Orb fan. It's somewhat cooler now, although still hot, and artifacts during play are way down. Plus I'm not crashing at all now. Tonight the new 60mm fan should arrive and once I replace it, my computer might actually be quiet enough that I can sleep in the room when it's running. Right now, it sounds like there is a vacuum cleaner somewhere inside my computer.