Namdrol on 2/3/2010 at 18:24
Paint.net is the best of the free image/photo editing programs.
Al_B on 4/3/2010 at 20:49
Nice pictures, Biker - those adhesive cable tie bases are cheap and very useful.
I suspect the problem that Aero has with moving the sound card is that it's not a conventional PCI card - looks like a 1x PCIe card and not a PCI card. I'd be tempted to get all that dust cleaned up, fans and cables tidied as you suggest and simply take out the sound card and run from the onboard sound temporarily. Seeing what temperature you get then would be informative.
bikerdude on 4/3/2010 at 22:45
Quote Posted by Al_B
I suspect the problem that Aero has with moving the sound card is that it's not a conventional PCI card - looks like a x1 PCIe card
Doh, yeah i see the small yellow slot now... Hmm I wonder if that mobo has another pci-e x1/x4 slot, then that the sound card could be moved to there etc...
Aerothorn whats the make and model of your mobo, or can you confirm the amount of x1/x4 pci-e slots on that mobo..?..?
TBE on 5/3/2010 at 06:11
He has 2 PCIe 1x slots, and 1 of them is being blocked by the cooler on his video card. The other has his sound card in it. :(
I'd say buck up and buy a PCI sound card. I'm running Windows 7 using a Soundblaster Audigy 2. They are pretty cheap online if you can find them on ebay or similar.
Stupid motherboard design caged into the ATX form factor. Any PCI express 16x slot, will usually hold a nice video card, with a cooler, that blocks the next slot. I am using a PCIe 8x slot for my video card because my video card was blocking all the good slots in the 16x slot.
Inline Image:
http://home.comcast.net/~presleycraig/p26841.jpgbikerdude on 5/3/2010 at 11:08
Well if its an Xfi based card, we could perhaps do a swap as I have a pci based xfi.
As I have the opposite issue my pci sound card is getting the way and I have a spare pci-e x1/4 slot above my main gfx card thats just begging to be used...
Aerothorn on 5/3/2010 at 14:47
I'll double-check but I'm 90% sure the CPU fan is blowing the right way - still, I'll check that out and switch it to the other side if that's possible.
You're totally right about the dust and cabling - this is what happens with a ludicrous college workload that doesn't give you time for maintenance of this stuff (cabling was semi-decent before but got a little screwy when it was shipped across the country). I'll give it a go as soon as I'm able.
As far as the sound card, I'm gonna see how much these other issues do to resolve things - it's absolutely awesome and I'd like to keep it if possible.
Also, I don't have any good twist ties for the cables on me - what are the best kind to get?
bikerdude on 5/3/2010 at 20:05
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
I'll double-check but I'm 90% sure the CPU fan is blowing the right way - still, I'll check that out and switch it to the other side if that's possible.
As far as the sound card, I'm gonna see how much these other issues do to resolve things - it's absolutely awesome and I'd like to keep it if possible.
Also, I don't have any good twist ties for the cables on me - what are the best kind to get?
With the CPU fan located as it is atm, its 'sucking' not blowing abd as I mentioned before mount the fan on the other side of the cooler and make sure its pointing the same direction as the rear case fan.
If you have an Xfi card, then its the same as mine, just pcie rather than pci.
All I use are plain cables ties, I lay the cables in such a way that 995 of the the time I don't need to tie them to anything....
Aerothorn on 5/3/2010 at 21:13
1. Got time to do a real investigation this morning - you are correct, the fans are working at cross-purposes. I tried to switch the fan to the other side of the cooler but it uses these strange rubber plugs that are extremely difficult to insert or remove - I got two out but the other two simply would not budge without me applying an unsafe amount of force, and of the two I got out one would not only barely go back in before getting stuck. It seems the only way to fix this is to remove the entire heatsink and turn it around, but for that of course I need the thermal gel and I don't have that with me at the moment - it will have to wait at least till I can get it shipped to me, and possibly longer depending on various circumstances. Until then, would it be better for me to just turn off the fan, or is it better to have it on even if it's not going with the flow? I suspect the latter but want to check.
2. While my card is based on the X-Fi chipset, it is not a Creative X-Fi card - it is an Auzentech Forte, and the hardware is very different from the Creative cards. Additionally, not all creative X-Fis are created equal, as they used different iterations of the chipset, and some later releases are not "true" x-fi's at all but simply carry the brandname. Even the closest PCI Auzentech counterpart, the Prelude, lacks the dedicated headphone amplifier that was my primary purpose in buying this card, so it's not really swappable for anything in the PCI world.
