On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:21:28 -0700, PlainBill wrote:

On Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:23:24 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:58:47 -0700, PlainBill wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:41:11 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:44:24 -0700, PlainBill wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:31:32 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:26:58 -0400, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

KenO wrote:

Inherited a Dell Dimension 2300 that suddenly shut down for some
reason besides a power outage.

Found reason when opened the case and found a broken P4 cpu heat
sink retainer and loose heat sink.

Did some searching and found others with same problem.

For example:

"The heatsink is clamped onto a black plastic moulding which
appears to be screwed onto the motherboard and surrounds the CPU
socket. On of the 'legs' which sticks up from this has broken. As
a result one end of the heatsink cannot be tightly clamped to the
CPU.
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.co...browse_thread/
thread/
aa39dd6016df30b9/d2b013fe15c9c2ab?hl=en&q=broken+P4+heat+sink
+retainer#d2b013fe15c9c2ab

"When i opened the box to clean it out (been sitting in the same
place in the shop for 5 years) I found one of the heatsink
retainers just lying in the case. Upon furter inspection i found
that the plasic square box that is mounted to the motherboard
that the heatsink attaches to is broken."
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=465220

Since this OEM part tends to fail would like to do a more
permanent repair.

Did a search using [best P4 CPU heat sink retainer] but so far
have not found anything of interest.

Am open to any comments, suggestions, tips...


Pentium 4 Socket 478 Heatsink Retention Module $1.59:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...6W1-51&cat=CPU

Those don't always work on Dell. Last one I worked on the bolt
pattern didn't line up with the holes in the mainboard. Most dell
desktop used a single 120mm fan mounted on back drawing air through
a shroud encasing a heatsink of fins that was about 4 or 5 inches
tall. This one was in pieces when it was given to me and part of the
original retainer were missing. This was an LGA also. I did find the
missing part later at a PC shop a friend owns. He said he had just
had one in that the mainboard was toast. Not a great machine,
hyperthreading single core 3.0 ghz Intel. Got to have at least a
dual core these days.
Ahh, the luxury of unreasonable feelings of entitlement!!!

An acquaintance sent over a Thinkpad X40 a couple of weeks ago.
He'd
picked it up for $20 at a flea market. 1.2Ghz Pentium M, 500 Megs
of RAM, 20 Gig hard drive, wireless networking, no CD drive, Win XP.
He thought he had 'bricked' it trying to install Win7 from a thumb
drive. After 5 minutes investigation I found the 'clover leaf' power
cord was bad. I hook up a good power cord, it works, the battery
even takes a charge, and send it back to him.

A week later he reports he added another Gig of RAM ($30) a new
power cord ($5), and Win7 and it works wonderfully. "It's the ideal
system to use at a coffee shop".

So for under $100 (a significant portion of which was for shipping)
he's got something that is faster than an iPad, has a real keyboard,
and can be upgraded. Not all people measure their importance by the
speed of their computer.

PlainBill

My Dell Mini 910 with 8 gig SSD runs 7 Professional perfectly It has
an Intel Atom hyperthreading CPU that runs at 1.3 ghz and 2 gigs of
DDR2 ram. I have an additional 8 gig SD card in it for storage. Cold
boot time to login screen is about 30 seconds. So I'm not bashing
lower performance computers. Just for some things, a dual core is
needed. I upgraded my son's HT 3.0 ghz single intel to a dual core, he
plays games. It increased his video frame rate from 15 fps to 30. Some
of those games need at least a dual core. Myself I run a quad core AMD
Phenom II 955 on an Asus M48At-E mobo with 4 gigs Corsair DDR3 FSB at
1600 MHZ. I can encode raw avi video into MPEG2 at about 200 FPS. What
took hours on a single core 2.0 GHZ AMD64 now takes minutes. So again
it all has its place. I still have an Asus M6Bne, 1.8 ghz 15.4
widescreen laptop from 2004 I use daily. And an Athalon T-Bird 1.0 ghz
box downstairs not being used.
You mention two purposes where higher performance is appropriate. I'm
of the opinion that few people (other than professional game
developers) NEED a higher performance system. Encoding video can be a
different matter. Years ago I discovered a 2.4Ghz P4 with 1 Gig of
RAM could transcode a AVI file into DVD format VIRTUALLY in a matter
of minutes - I started the process before going to bed, in the morning
there was a DVD waiting.

I've done a lot of home video from 8 and mini DV into DVD. Last one was
with a P4 # 3.0 ghz, hyper threading and 4 gigs of ram. It took hours to
encode a 20 GB raw AVI into DVD using Sony DVD Architect. I'm sorry but
I don't believe you.

That's because you don't read carefully and lack comprehension.

I set up the transcoding in the evening, just before I go to bed.
The task completes while I am sleeping. From my point of view, my
computer was unavailable only for a few minutes.

I read and comprehend just fine. While you slept you machine still took
hours to render the mpeg video. My point wasn't virtual performance based
on one's perception. And that fine with me. Not trying to tell you what
equipment to use or how to use it I merely mentioned the actual
performance of newer equipment.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse