Time's up on clock speed

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BURNING UP INSIDE

Biggest problem with CPUs nowadays is they generate too much heat. And if you think it can't get worse, Intel's latest processor line performs slightly worse (clock for clock) than the last and run notably hotter. All for the sake of increasing the clock frequency--once again!

I am tired of building PCs the size of furniture for the sake of providing sufficient air space/flow, because the overpriced CPU is really now just a heater.

I worked up a sweat recently building a micro-atx, slime-line computer because I decided this time I was not going put yet another boxy mid-tower on my desk.

I used a 3.2GHz with a 10,000 RPM drive, but the small computer was overheating and ran noisier than even my mid-towers. After two days of fiddling I put a resistor on the CPU fan, rotated the PS fan, built an exhaust chamber out of cardboard so it could direct the hot air away from the hard drive and then finally, I ended up with a small, quiet, reasonably cool, fast computer.

My wife looked at it and said, "what's that?". I said it's a computer? She said, "all computers should be like that".

While I don't mind putting this much effort into my boxes, I can't afford to struggle this way when building my company's systems. I'd easily sacrifice CPU performance in return for quiet/cool computing because I know most of my users simply DO NOT REQUIRE a fast processor.

The solution would be simple if only I could find a cost feasible motherboard for a Pentium M/Centrino CPU (largely Intel's fault). MHz for MHz, the Pentium M smokes the P4 (by a factor of about 1.8:1) and draws much less power. I don't care about the P4's fancy memory optimizations because it does very little to speed up business apps. The multimedia/video advantages of the P4 is mostly irrelevant for business systems. Even for a large majority of home users. Is there a reason to opt for less clock cycles? Of course.

Time for a change in the CPU/semiconductor industry. I like this article.

Posted by: dogfoamatmouth   Posted on: 06/09/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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