Cherry trees in Helsinki, 2008
7 May 2008 22:41:15
photos, update
Spring/summer is a bit early this year in Finland. Not everyone likes
it but I'm not complaining. Last Sunday was just splendid day to get
out to sit in a park. In addition to beautiful weather and good
company, cherry trees were in full flower. Actually these things are
not real cherry trees but they're close enough for me. I just wish one
day I could get to Japan in April...
I also uploaded some other photos to
random 2008 set. I'll have to put a
link there on "photos" page at some point.
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Big graphics card is big
7 May 2008 22:18:51
hardware
About a day ago I finally received my new graphics card. GeForce 9600GT
would be more powerful than my old and faithfull 7800GT, but more
importantly, 9600GT wouldn't have any moving parts -- it would be
completely silent. When I got home, I opened the box and was surprised
how big the thing was. I soon shut down my computer and opened the
case. I removed the old GFX-card only to find out my the graphics card
wouldn't fit in, thanks to larger-than-average chipset heatsink. Now
what?
So the thing won't fit in as-is. Forgetting the whole thing is out of
the question so the only option is to make it fit. After
carefully considering all options, I decided to find out what would
happen when a chipset heatsink and side cutters would meet. To my
surprise my cheap Chinese side cutters won. I disassembled my computer
to remove the motherboard from the case and popped the lately replaced
chipset heatsink off the motherboard.
I then made some measurements of the chipset fan and my new GFX-card. I
realised that I could either chip almost half of the fins, or move the
heatsink a bit aside, and cut only two rows of fins out of the way.
Since the chipset core was only about one eighth of the casing area, I
decided in favour of cutting two rows on fins and relocating the
heatsink.
I had to hack Debian's nvidia-kernel-source package to get the
latest nVidia drivers (171.06) installed neatly. Version 169.12 of the
drivers would fail completely with 9600GT. My system is now running its
second day with the new graphics card and mutilated chipset heatsink.
So far everything looks good -- and sounds just brilliant. I can warmly
recommend Geforce 9600GT with passive heatsink for discriminating Linux
user.
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