General computer talk/advice

Windows XP has been unsupported for years now, you should be on Windows 7 or newer anyway.
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10/10 best product description
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B017LOXRAC

 

"Combining intuitive software and versatile routing options, HUE+ lets you light up your system like never before". I think I should put that in my sig.

 

Yesterday was a crappy day, but with good highlights: two new vintage computers to my fleet!

The one I'm proud of is my new Toshiba T2000SX. 43 MB HDD, 1MB RAM (with 4MB expansion installed), and an Intel 8088 (I think...) at 16 MHz. The hard drive is bad, unfortunately, but it does turn one and the battery *drum roll* holds a charge.

The second one is a Dell Optiplex GX 110 (I think, can't remember). It features an Intel Pentium III 533 MHz Slot processor, 128 MB RAM, and an aftermarket 80 GB Seagate HDD. It's currently running Windows XP Home Edition.

Oh, almost forgot, the T2000SX came with a matching Kodak dot matrix portable printer, and all appropriate cabling.

 

Don't use mobile
Go to the desktop site

 

I am on the deskop site. I'd say you meant the HueHueHueHueHueHueHueHueHueHue+-joke and the way it was praised though.
Pun overload. Pun overload! PUN OVERLOA-BLAMMO!

 

(SFF?) Optiplex GX260, 1GB of RAM, Pentium 4 @2.0GHz, 80GB hard drive. Power supply is good for 180 watts.
http://imgur.com/a/t69CZ
What do you think I can do with it? Don't have any AGP cards that will fit inside by the looks of it.

 

I think you can just use it for basic applications that you don't need your normal PC for. Probably.

 

I don't plan on using it all the time, I want to see how fast I could make it run.

 

You could put it in the trash where it belongs.

 

I got it for free, keeping it and might turn it on for nostalgia at some point.

 

Take the P4, drill a hole in it, and put it on a keychain. Trash everything else.

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I'm doing the same with some old celery

 

I got tons of crap for free, even managed to build a decent PC out of it (Q9550), threw out loads of P4 and Sempron/Athlon XP PCs. Kept the CPUs though, I'm building my own 'LTT CPU bin'.

It's not old enough to have any historic value and it's too old to be of any actual use.

 

I have a dead one I could do that to.

 

Heatsinks and radiators are very difficult to move air through. Lots of back pressure from fitting air through so many tiny gaps. As such you tend to require a fan capable of maintaining a high static pressure to get any air to force through.

Fans like the F12 and corsairs AF120 if you look have large gaps between the blades but a high angle of attack on the blade. They move a large volume of air which is great, but when it comes to maintaining pressure, that pressure can leak backwards through the large gaps. They cant easily force air through a heatsink or a radiator. Something like corsairs SP120 or the stock fans on a 212 evo have blades with a lower angle of attack (which tends to limit the total volume they can shift) but no gaps between the blades, they can maintain that higher pressure more readily.

Sandwiching 2 fans either side of a 212 evo, a radiator or any other air cooler. 1 fan effectively produces negative pressure within the heat sink, drawing air out. The other is trying to force it in. In combo does allow a greater *mass* of air through, but not necessarily volume. If you have 2 fans rated at 30cfm they will still only move 30cfm when compounded as an absolute max, but their ability to move that 30cfm is less impeded by obstructions, and higher pressure but same volume = higher mass to absorb heat.



For getting air into the case, you have no obstruction, you want to look at airflow optimised fans like the F12 and the AF120 (which I really wish came in a PWM edition, although I know you can remove the blades from an AF120 and stick it on an SP120 PWM performance edition to come up with an AF120 PWM sitting somewhere between quiet and performance edition speeds) so main case intakes and exhausts should be these.
For getting air through something with obstruction like a CPU heat sink (the metal part of a 212 evo is the heat sink) or a water cooling radiator. You want a pressure optimised fan like the SP120. Noctua make a few (forget number) that can outdo the SP120 but they are alot more expensive for negligible improvement and the SP120 is truly excellent.



Regarding the SP120 quiet and performance editions. This simply refers to the motors speed.
On a CPU cooler you usually want a PWM capable fan, these have a 4th wire on them that allows the motherboard to control the speed of the fan so at idle its barely running then full load gets noisier.
Some people do run non PWM fans on watercooling radiators though and then just adjust the speed with voltage regulation and dont worry about it adjusting under load.

 

I did this with a GPU, a dead 9500GT. It's pretty cool.

 

Credit where it is due, I think this was originally @redrobin's idea.

 

Alright, now I also have an Optiplex 745 /w a Core 2 Duo @1.86 GHz. 2 GB of RAM and 80GB hard drive.
http://i.imgur.com/YGqJiIQ.jpg
What do you think I can do with this one?

 

NAS if you get some large hard drives. CPU is still underpowered, but a lot better than a P4, and you don't need a fast CPU for storage.

 

that's some vintage stuff you got there. you can almost open a hi res text document with these bad boys!

 

Thanks a lot!
@BlueScreen You should add his post to your Computer Building Guide. It's incredibly helpful.