How cool are Athlon64 's?

[GIPNOR]

Here's my delimma... it may sound stupid, but my PC is a health hazard in a small room!

I'm a programmer and I work from home. Right now, we're in the process of building a house and my family and I are living in an apartment... it can be a bit crampt. The room for my office is pretty small and the ventalation isn't very good.

I have one box I built a while back with an Athlon 2100XP and an ASUS A78NX deluxe. It's one of the earlier revisions and when it came out it did not support a 400Mhz FSB (don't know if upgrading firmware would enable this... doesn't really matter at this point).

Whenever I run my 2100 box, it SUCKS the humidity out of the room. Not only does it get hot like a little space heater, the air also becomes very dry. Prolonged exposure will dry your sinuses out, give you headaches, and make you sick.

For this reason, I mostly run my old PIII 733 or sit in my living room with my laptop (thank God for wireless!).

I'm guessing it will be 9 months before we're able to get everything approved, and our new home is ready. At this point, I guess I have several options.

1. Don't upgrade the PC until we move into the new place, use it sparingly until then.

2. Buy a new MB and Athlon64 3000 (maybe it would run cool enough?)

3. Would alternative cooling reduced how quickly the humidity is removed from the air?

4. Would upgrading to a Barton processor help with anything?

Any other suggestions? Am I the only person who has this kind of problem? I bought a little temperature/humidity monitor and I was pretty surprised when I saw how quickly the air in my office became dry.

Thanks!

 

[InkSpot]

I'd opt for number 2

A64 have this cool feature called Cool and Quite, a laptop feature brought to the desktop which automatically changes the clockspeed. (33W at 800 Mhz (soon to be 25W at 1000Mhz with CG stepping))

The A64 3000+ packs plenty of horsepower and at the same time it offers great flexibilty by downclclocking when you don't need the full speed to work.

 

[P4Man]

I never heard anyone metion humidity, and frankly, I don't really understand how it could affect humidity. Of course, as the temperature increases, relative humidity drops, but I really can't imagine there would be a measureable effect unless your work in an airtight sealed cubicle Maybe you could put a small bucket of water on your CPU cooler to make it evaporate to compensate ?

As for your question; its true a A64 runs cool, very cool when your not running extremely cpu intensive apps. the poster above gave the numbers (although TDP does not mean actual power consumption, actual will usually be lower) and I would not be surprised power consumption of the cpu is roughly half of what your current cpu draws. But there is more than the cpu you know. If you work on a large CRT, it will probably draw more power than any cpu. Also graphic cards, harddisks, etc, combined also draw a considerable ammount of electricity, especially when combined with the inefficiency of PSU's.

If you don't need anything much faster than what you have (which I suspect if you can do your work on a P3 laptop), a cheapo solution might be getting a mobile athlon (barton), plugging it in your current MB. Enable power saving to turn of your harddisks after a few minutes, and not so cheap, but likely more effective: replace your CRT with a LCD.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[endyen]

Your best bet would be to use one of the mobile xp processors in your current board. The mobile xp 2500+ is $100 and puts out about 45 watts of power, just over 1/2 of your current chip. Once you have moved you can run the speed up to whatever you are comfortable with, as the multipliers are unlocked.

 

[TheRod]

Buy a little machine called HUMIDIFIER and get rid of all your problems for less!

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

 

[sonoran]

How about option #5 - buy a $10 steam vaporizer at the local drug store?

 

[GIPNOR]

Thanks for the suggestions... I DO in fact use a 19" CRT monitor and maybe switching to an LCD would reduce the amount of heat and dryness in my office. I hadn't thought of that. It would give me some more room too!

BTW, I live in the state of Louisiana now, so my entire environment <i>IS</i> a humidifier Much of my state is swampland.

I can't explain the physics, but I know for a fact that the air in my office will quickly become 25% dryer than other parts of my apartment. I've measured it.

I do most of my work on my laptop which is a 2.2Ghz P4. I run my PIII 733 for file sharing, printing and things like that. My Athlon box is for fun/gaming, but I haven't played a game seriously in a while.

Switching to an LCD monitor might do me more good ATM than upgrading to a relatively new and processor and chipset.

Thanks

 

[jammydodger]

Almost as cool as me.

[Insert witty comment here]

 

[pauldh]

I second just using your current motherboard and running a Mobile XP2500+ at 11*166 @ 1.45v. Also, maybe invest in an adjustable speed heatsink/fan like a Coolermaster Aero7 or Volcano 9. Then you can pick the speed, noise, heat ratio to match you current conditions. Also, you could try a Zalman quiet case fan too. As far as humidity, I too have a hard time imagining your computer is drying the air that much, but if so, why not buy a cheap $30 cool humidifier from Walmart and run it on the other side of the room. My kids pediatricians are always recommending those things to counteract the dry air from our heaters.

Mobile XP2500+ $100. Mobile XP2400+ $77. Coolermaster Aero7+ $25, Zalman quiet case fan $8, cool humidifier, $30. A64 and new mobo is going to run way, way higher than that. Put the extra money into the house. If the laptop is adequate for your work, the 2500+ will scream for you.


ABIT IS7, P4 2.6C, 512MB Corsair TwinX PC3200LL, Radeon 9800 Pro, Santa Cruz, TruePower 430watt<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Pauldh on 03/07/04 08:53 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[DCB_AU]

Your PC will make heater manufacturers go broke

Err, open a window, or increase the amount of ventilation.

There is a trick I've seen done before in mining labs, - use evaporative air con.

Better still, upgrade your PC.

<font color=red>DCB</font color=red><font color=white>_</font color=white><font color=blue>AU</font color=blue>

 

[P4Man]

I just checked about LCD/CRT power consumption. It seems a 19" CRT draws about 140-150W (iiyama), and a comparable 17" LCD consumes ~60W maximum. Now, I am fairly certain a CRT will pretty much always draw near "maximum" power when its on, for a LCD I'm not sure if there is a difference between a mostly static image and eg watching a movie. I'm *guessing* the 60W can only be reached watching a (bright white) movie, and just displaying a desktop will consume (considerably?) less. Maybe an expert in the field can clue us in though.

Either way, even if both numbers are comparable, there is a nice 80-90W reduction right there. swapping your current cpu for a mobile or A64, might give you a 40W reduction max, and closer to 10-20W typical. How much all this is worth to you as well additional advantages (more deskspace, cool looking LCD, versus much better performance (A64)) is of course up to you. If money is no constraint, I would buy a A64 anyway, as well as the LCD

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =