Computer Cooling Experiment With Irn Bru Lid

Irn Bru Cooling For A Computer

Cooling a computer is vital and is an area that MUST be carefully considered when building a computer.

Over the last few months we have been very busy building loads of computers mainly for gaming but with the huge rise in social media, we have built a large number of computers specifically for video, image and sound editing.

Computers for gaming and editing have similar requirements but a common key area is that of computer cooling.

In our high end computer builds, we will always use liquid cooling simply because liquid cooling is so efficient, reliable and good. In addition, because of the effectiveness of liquid cooling, it helps reduce the fan noise.

While advancing our computer cooling skills via learning & experimentation, one of the engineers came up with the idea of seeing if we could successfully cool a CPU using an Irn Bru bottle lid.

 The successful outcome would be that the CPU was sufficiently cooled to boot.

This short video tells the story:

Thermal Paste - A Necessary Evil

Do not under estimate the importance of applying thermal paste correctly.

At worst case, not using the thermal paste correctly could lead to the CPU being fried, at best, you will be plagued by all sorts of system instability, Blue Screen Of Death, poor performance to name but a few.

In this short video, Scott explains the vital role of thermal paste and how to apply it correctly.

We sell quality thermal paste in our computer shop and of course from our on-line webstore

How To Use Thermal Paste In Your Computer

Thermal Paste Horrors

Without getting too technical, thermal paste is a special compound that is used between the CPU or brain of the computer and the heat sink.

The thermal paste ensures a near perfect mating/join between the surface of the CPU and the surface of the heat sink to maximise the heat transfer away from the CPU. Computer CPU’s are very similar to the human brain inthat they are incredibly sensitive to heat. Any extra heat and they die!!

In this particular case, a gamer had been attempting to upgrade the cooling on his CPU but made the most unfortunate mistake of using too much thermal paste.

 If too much thermal paste is used, then instead of being a boost to heat conductivity, the extra thermal paste acts as insulation thus causing the CPU to over heat and this in this case regretfully die.

Thermal paste should be used like Tippex and applied over the entire surface of the CPU in a very very thin layer.

We use thermal paste everyday in the course of building or repairing computer systems, Our preferred brand is Arctic .

Our on-line computer components shop has just about everything you might need to build a computer

If you have any questions about thermal paste or any other aspect of building get in touch and we'll do our best to help.

Details of the Next Generation of Processors from Intel

Details of the new processor range (Ivy Bridge) from Intel were released to Intel Partners of which we are one :)

Particularly looking forward to using the new gen processors in our custom gaming PC build service.

More information on the new Intel Processor Generation can be found on our main site

A Nearly New Gaming Beast

We are passionate gamers and computer engineers which is a very dangerous combination.

Pushing the technical envelope is one of our favourite past times and we have been working on overclocking BUT getting it stable and usable.

At the same time our Boss, gave us a challenge of building a best value gaming monster rig using 'normal' or readily available parts.

So after a quick hunt around our shop, warehouse and workshop we built this Gaming Beast:

Nice Red Fans Give it a Cool Look!

Nice Antec Gaming Case

Note the water cooling, its got 8 GB DDR 3RAM, 1 TB storage and an overclocked quad core Intel processor!!

Just to give it a nice touch, we added a BlueRay optical drive.

The operating system is Windows Home Premium 64 and it goes like a rocket!!

We had great fun testing this gaming rig but alas is now up for sale in our web store

Cooling High End Gaming PC Systems

Gaming computers generate a lot of heat by virtue of the fact that they are 'driven' hard by the nature of their use not to mention the powerful graphics cards etc

Traditional air cooling by fans can result in a lot of back ground noise which when the gaming desktop is running at full speed can be very loud.

In order to keep the gaming rig as cool and as quiet as possible, we use the  Corsair Cooler Hydro Series H40 CPU Cooler in our mid to  top end gaming systems.

Corsair Air Cooling for Gaming PC's

Needle In A Hay Stack in The Computer Repair Center Perth

The computer engineer's equivalent of a needle in the proverbial haystack!

Over the course of a week, when we are repairing so many computers and laptops, we build up loads of spares including screws, nut and bolts.

We keep all of these items because you never know when we might need them in the course of computer repairs in Perth

Computer Gaming Pedigree

Alex, our Engineer, shares his enthusiasm for custom building gaming rigs by sharing his own personal gaming system.

As one of the main gaming enthusiasts in the workshop I take great pride and pleasure in creating gaming specifications to a wide variety of budgets and gaming needs. I also enjoy physically building the computers and testing them.

So I thought I would share with you all my own gaming system that I have built up over the years to illustrate that I am very passionate about what I do and take pride in every system I build, big or small.

System Specs

Processor:- AMD Phenom II x6 1090t Black Edition.

Memory:- Corsair 16GB 1600Mhz.

Graphics:- 2x AMD HD 5870 (In Crossfire).

Motherboard:- Asus Crosshair V Republic of Gamers.

Hard Drive 1:- 240GB Patriot Pyro 6Gbit Sata SSD.

Hard Drive 2:- 2TB Hard Drive.

Power Supply:- Thermaltake 650Watt Modular. 

Cooling:- Phobia 280mm Radiator, XSPC Reservoir and pump combo and XSPC waterblock.

Case:- Antec Dark Fleet 85 (3x120mm fans on the front, 120mm fan rear mounted and 2x140mm fans mounted on radiator.).

If you have any questions don't hesitate to give us a call or pop onto the website http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk

Gaming Computer for Microsoft FS X

Just finished a very interesting computer gaming build as part of our custom gaming computer design and build service.

The requirement was for a high spec PC to be able to play the very very demanding Microsoft Flight Sim X at as high a frame rate with as good resolution as possible.


It also had to look good, run quiet and not be monster foot print AND with expansion for the future.

Not an off the shelf solution.

So after a bit of research and some pretty extensive testing and tweaking we decided on an Antec 300 case, 750 watt power supply and a 120 GB SSD

Windows 7 64 Bit stripped down to absolute minimum with 8 GB DDR3 booting from an SSD is so fast that if you are a serious Gamer, you really should consider it.

The graphics is provided by an Nvidia GeForce 560ti. Despite having 8 GB RAM, there are still 2 spare RAM slots and a secondary PCI Expres slot for a second graphics card.

Internals BEFORE Cable Management

Donald, had the pleasure of 'demonstrating' the finished product to the client:

All in all a VERY nice gaming system

The finished product can be purchased via our website and of course we would be happy to discuss any additional features or mods that you would like added to personalise your gaming PC

A quick video of the finished product in action:

Over Clocking Mother Board in the Extreme

Just been told that we are going to get our hand on the latest mother board for Gamers from MSi to build a totally awesome gaming PC

http://www.pcsolutions.co.uk/news/msi-releases-over-clocking-dream-mother-board.html

Please let me be the Engineer who gets this 'task'!

Xmas Crisis

Just been handed a rush job to build a computer for running Football Manager 2012. Gotta have it ready within  2hrs

But we'll do it. Don't want a Christmas spoiled!