I think I'm gonna call it the Sketchy Seagull

Dec. 11th, 2018 02:43 pm
roadrunnertwice: DTWOF's Lois in drag. Dialogue: "Dude, just rub a little Castrol 30 weight into it. Works for me." (Castrol (Lois))
[personal profile] roadrunnertwice

So these junkyard PC adventures have continued, because I am in full project mode.

Little stuff:

  • Discovered how to remove that useless front fan! (And vacuumed out a huge wad of dust from inside the plastic front panel while I was in there.) It looks like the case was designed to have a fan there, but it was meant to suck up air from a tiny downward-facing vent a few mm above the floor? How about not.
  • I also replaced the rattly rear exhaust fan, because it turns out a nice fan costs like $8 new.
  • Tidied up the interior cables with some stretchy ties, some blue tape, and the one Command hook I could scrounge up. (They were a tangled mess, and I worried they'd foul the fan blades.)
  • Installed the SSD.
  • Bought a sketchy USB bluetooth adapter for $7.

  • And hey, it looks like HDMI audio from the gpu is working fine, even in Linux! So my plan of just swapping my speaker cord between the thunderbolt dock (for Mac) and the monitor (for PC) will totally work!

    (Actually my Mac can also use the monitor for sound, via DisplayPort... except then the music cuts out when the monitor goes to sleep, and that just won't fly. So swapping cables it is.)

Stuff where I had to learn a thing:

  • I took the Intel heat sink off (and blew a shitload of dust from between the fins), removed the crusty old thermal paste, and applied fresh paste! 😱 I've never had to deal with the "goop" phase of computer building before, but I heard that the stuff loses efficiency by drying out over time, and my housemate had a tube of decent paste sitting around, and I was like, welllll, while I have it open...

    It was mildly tense, but really pretty easy. The only confusing part was that the pegs holding the heat sink in were already in the "unlocked" position (which they shouldn't have been!!! 😑), so I was disoriented and had to read multiple guides about how to remove it before I figured out what was up.

    I already checked on the CPU temperature sensors several times last week (because I was a tiny bit paranoid about turning off that front fan), and they'd been hovering somewhere in the 50°C+ range (which is fine) during a session of mucking around in my temporary Ubuntu sandbox. So after doing the paste thing, I switched all the fans to "silent" mode in the BIOS and booted back into Linux, and after running for a while, the core temp was just kind of chilling in the mid-30°s. So I'm pretty sure that was actually worthwhile!

Anyway, now I'm at the point where I get to install an OS and maybe actually play a game or two. Wish me luck!!!

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