After installing Windows XP with minimal drivers on a 40 GB PATA hard drive from Seagate to perform some hardware tests, I noticed the following:

• The CPU fans on both PCs have clear bearing damage and need to be replaced
• The thermal paste needs to be replaced* as the fan speed is always quite high
• The fan on one of the power supplies is also noisy
• The more powerful ATI Radeon 9800 XXL in the P4 system is partially defective: the VRAM is damaged, the image is occasionally distorted and displayed with color distortion, and under load, it leads to an irreversible black screen
• Everything gets very warm; legend has it that the Pentium fours were real heaters. That’s about right.

Spare parts are needed

I simply removed the noisy fan in the power supply, cleaned it, greased the bearing, and reinstalled it. I only recommend this to electronics engineers, as opening power supplies is dangerous. Now the fan is even quieter than the other, more inconspicuous one.

I replaced the thermal paste with my favorite MX-4 from Arctic* – the original paste on the processors had hardened so much that, despite letting the system warm up, the CPU was stuck to the cooler on both PCs. Very dangerous—straightening bent pins is no fun. I had to hammer the Celeron D off the cooler from the side with a flathead screwdriver (!). I was lucky in my misfortune, not a single pin was bent. The paste was also renewed on the chipset.

As a replacement for the partially defective Radeon 9800 XXL, I found a working Radeon 9600 Pro from Sapphire, AGP 8x, in my collection. It fits very well. The driver is exactly the same.

The CPU fans are 80 mm – a rather unusual size. I found generic ones that match the power LED on the power switch, which glows blue. A small visual upgrade, you might say. They’re not the quietest of their kind, but they’re much better than the originals were.

Hard drives were no problem at all. If there’s one thing I have a lot of, it’s data storage devices of all kinds, designs, and models.

The Hardware

And now?

Since the basic system should remain as close to series production as possible, I got the most out of the intended operating systems. As already mentioned, Windows 98 SE should run as a minimum, but I went to the limits of what is possible, which in this case is AGP 8x, for which there was simply no support at some point.

Der Beitrag <h5>Medion PC-MT6 #4: </h5><h3><b>Maintenance and upgrades</b></h3> erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.

First, you need to decide what the PC will be used for. In my case, it’s a retro PC that will rarely be used and will mainly serve as a safe storage place for the components (especially the graphics cards).

The top priority is therefore cost efficiency, followed by noise level and cooling performance.

Case fans

That was obvious – I’m using fans from BeQuiet. I installed the following configuration:

• Front: 2 x 140 mm BeQuiet PureWings 2 PWM*
• Rear: 1 x 140 mm BeQuiet PureWings 2 PWM*
• Top: 1 x 140 mm BeQuiet PureWings 2 PWM*
• Bottom: 1 x 140 mm BeQuiet PureWings 2 PWM*

For me, these fans offer a good compromise between noise level, cooling performance, appearance, and price. Unfortunately, the successor models are now significantly more expensive. Noctua was not an option for cost reasons, but Arctic would have been an alternative. I didn’t want RGB fans; black is fine.

Processor cooler

Given all the circumstances, I didn’t want AiO or water cooling for this PC either, for reasons such as durability. I also opted for BeQuiet, specifically a BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 air cooler*.

The main reasons were noise level, appearance, and compatibility with the LGA 2011 socket. The successor no longer offers these, for example. Things like the height of the RAM and general compatibility with the motherboard also have to be considered. This isn’t the best cooler for maximum performance; there are several others from Noctua or Thermalright that would be more powerful.

However, when I compared coolers, this model was the best overall package for me, and here too, you have to take the price into account.

⧉ BeQuiet

⧉ BeQuiet

⧉ BeQuiet

⧉ BeQuiet

⧉ BeQuiet

⧉ BeQuiet

Der Beitrag <h5>Retro-XP-PC #10: </h5><h3><b>Cooling</b></h3> erschien zuerst auf flohs blog.