[B]Coworker:[/B] hey Chap, I bought a new computer last night and my old sound card doesn't fit in the new slot. And it's blue. It's got like a short thing and then a long slot and then another short slot.

[B]Me:[/B] the new computer has only one PCI slot?

[B]Coworker:[/B] I guess. I'm going to Microcenter to buy a new sound card after work, but I wanted to check with you to make sure I get the right one.

[B]Me:[/B] I've got a computer back here running with the sides off right now, can you show me on the motherboard where the bad sound card touched you?

[B]Coworker[/B] (grinning because abuse humor is always funny): sure!

Walk back into my Fortress of Gimpotude.

[B]Coworker:[/B] See it's like this one that you've got this card plugged into not like this one... (series of thumps and a metalic crunch) crap!

[B]Me [/B](seeing the CPU cooling fan parts flying hither and yon): Hey, no big deal, just a fan. (moving quickly to shut computer down before 4 saturated cores do some 105C dance of shame) It happens.

[B]Coworker:[/B] I'm real sorry, do you want me to get a new one while I'm at microcenter.

[B]Me:[/B] Don't worry about it. I've got a spare. [I](The spare is a stock cooler and I'll never keep the temps down, may the fleas of a thousand camels..)[/I]

[B]Coworker:[/B] what was that?

[B]Me:[/B] Oh, nothing, just thinking to myself. [I](Cosmic King is dead! [/I][B]Editor's note[/B][I]-[/I]Cosmic King is the name of this computer, they are all named after supervillains.[I] I'm gonna lose like 22 hours of processing time[/I])

Stock cooler installed, overclocking undone. Scared to put more heat in the box by turning Cudalucas back on...now slightly behind on work schedule...

A very sad story, but entertainingly related. Is the broken fan some non-standard item, or was there damage to the heatsink itself?

I sympathize greatly on the stock cooler situation. My partner's i7 920 has the boxed cooler, and runs quite warm, even at idle and stock speed. I've tried P95 on it, and got scared when it sailed past 70 C in less than a minute without slowing down. One of these days I'll put a decent heatsink on it. Perhaps give it the Evercool Hyper 212+ that's on my machine and get something a little beefier for me.....or vice versa.

[QUOTE=kladner;313418] Is the broken fan some non-standard item, or was there damage to the heatsink itself?
[/QUOTE]


Just fan blades and the plastic housing. (to be honest the other fan was just a better class of stock.)

with the new fan I was seeing temps in the high 80's C. So I placed a 120 vAC fan on the outside of the Case to draw more air through it. I've driven all the temps down below 80 C and I can live with that for now.

[QUOTE]
i7 920 has the boxed cooler, and runs quite warm, even at idle and stock speed
[/QUOTE]

My home desktop has an i7 920, which has to be one of the best chips ever. I've run that thing all summer long with the temps running very hot (I wonder if it's a common thing? Mine is a [URL="http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/dell-studio-xps-9000/4505-3118_7-33743813.html"]Dell XPS 9000[/URL], and while I was using Speedfan it was under-reporting the core temps by 14C! So I was around 90 C on all four cores for months. No problems at all. I've burnt up the original video card (the fake nVidia 7800 GTX), replaced a hard drive or two. and generally mistreated it, yet it still keeps chugging along.

It certainly seems to be a common notion that 920s (or maybe the whole first generation) run hot, but that Intel chips are very heat tolerant. You seem to have proved that!

A co-worker committed suicide a few days ago. Apparently he pleaded 'no contest' to a sexual assault the day before. This behavior was uncharacteristic of him, but apparently he knew that his behavior was wrong. He was a really nice guy and will be missed.

[QUOTE=kladner;313422]It certainly seems to be a common notion that 920s (or maybe the whole first generation) run hot, but that Intel chips are very heat tolerant. You seem to have proved that![/QUOTE]

I found that my i7/920 with stock heatsink running at stock speed was running perfectly happily but slowing down from overheating - the exact symptom was large numbers appearing in 'grep TRM /proc/interrupts', and slower linear algebra than I was expecting. Adding a giant heatsink fixed it.

(that is, your hot chip might well have been running slower than had it been cool)

[QUOTE=rogue;314968]A co-worker committed suicide a few days ago.[...][/QUOTE]
This must be hitting very hard. Everything strength wished to you and your colleagues to deal with what must be a terrible shock and very upsetting.

We found out today that we will not be permitted to vote.

Apparently the deadline to register has passed. We never though about having to re-register when we moved from North Carolina to Arkansas.

:down:

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;315855]We found out today that we will not be permitted to vote.

Apparently the deadline to register has passed. We never though about having to re-register when we moved from North Carolina to Arkansas.

:down:[/QUOTE]

You could try voting a provisional ballot. I re-registered to vote (due to a change of address) on the day of the election in 2004, but they told me my vote was likely to be counted.

I understand that every state's laws are different, but it's still worth a try.

Out of curiosity, can you legally vote in NC, then?

Nope: "Prior to voting, must be a resident of the county for at least 30 days prior to election day".
Xyzzy has been disenfranchised! :max:
(Still probably better than being defenestrated.)