Dan Hagen

“Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to ge tinto your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”

-Lawrence Krauss

My current computer contains an AMD Phenom II x4 965 3.4Ghz processor, which is basically AMD’s flagship quad-core CPU.

I’m running it at stock speed with the stock cooler, but I applied some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste for better heat dissipation. As it stands, with regular fan settings and AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet turned on, the Tcase sensor reports 33 degrees celsius while idle and maxes out at 60 degrees on full load (running Prime95). Core/Tjunction values are 4 or 5 degrees higher than Tcase values for my particular processor, which is normal.

Admittedly my computer case is very cheap. It has weak cooling, with a single rear 92mm exhaust fan. Tomorrow I’m going to install a second fan in the front. It will be a 120mm intake fan. I’m not sure how much it will do in the way of CPU temperatures; if anything, it should definitely improve my video card temperatures by a little bit. I have a factory-overclocked Gigabyte Radeon 5770 that has very good cooling – 3 copper heat pipes and a good fan – but it still gets considerably hot (low 70s) which I again blame on my cheap case.

I don’t think living with two family members should be that bad. My establishment is somewhat large as well, but in spite of this,  it’s actually easy to tell if someone else is home. The walls and the floors reverberate with various sounds and noises that are undeniably caused by loud family members. I can even distinguish both individuals apart from each other simply by the way they walk; on the Richter scale, my brother’s footsteps are about a 3.9, and my mother’s are a 4.3.

This wouldn’t be so bad if the same people who are loud weren’t also early-birds with a reckless disregard for people who are still sleeping.

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