It's ALIVE!!!!
Ok, this won't be long. I need to go to sleep like...um now.
So I bought a Zalman 9500 cpu cooler and got it thursday. Friday I ripped into my computer with plans to install it, only to hit a small snag.
Dell doesn't use a standard 478 socket retention guide. They used some bastard custom thing that rendered my new fancy heatsink useless. I'm so pissed at Dell for this pissy little crap it's not funny. I mean, ok I can understand the customer motherboard screw placement and mounting, because your case is adequate....but the heatshink they put in this machine is total bullshit. It's barely doing it's job and I can't even replace it with an aftermarket because you pulled this pissy little proprietary retention guide shit?
Suck. My. Balls. Dell.
Anyways, moving along, thank whatever diety you believe in, somebody was able to mail me a spare one they had. Which arrived today (thanks santyclaws, beers on my at the BBQ) so I was finally able to get my computer back up and running. So let's take a look at some pictures:
Once I had the right guide, everything else was cake. It's frightening to me to see how much pressure is used to keep this heatsink on, compared to the sloppy, loose OEM heatsink Dell shipped.
There are only three drawbacks:
1. Even though I spliced the sensor wire into the motherboard, the Dell BIOS still says theres a fan failure. Of course there's no way to disable this.
2. Now I can hear my hard driver. Was it always this loud????
3. I can also hear my power supply fan now....of course I used to have a real nice power supply, but I lent it to somebody to rule it out as a problem, and of course they then moved out of state without returning it. Dammit...it even glowed blue...motherf**ker....
Comments
> Dell doesn't use a standard 478 socket retention guide.
And this surprised you?
Posted by: david | July 9, 2006 07:00 AM
Sadly, yes, it wasn't something I was expecting. I just didn't assume they'd make something that custom and useless.
In hindsight I was a little naive.
Posted by: Dennis Judd![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.dennisjudd.com/nav-commenters.gif)
|
July 9, 2006 07:36 AM
DEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!@¿?!#!!
Cool little guide. I wish I'd a seen this info. earlier. I'm doing the same to a 4600, but I have the HSF now and no retention guide-luckily they are all over eBay for 478, will have to wait another week at least!
Horrendous Green Plastic Heat Duct of Hellfire, be gone!
Posted by: Tyler | July 21, 2006 12:16 AM
Oh and one more thing...
I had replaced the CPU exhaust fan previously with one that had a standard power connector (Damn you Dell), and just spliced the yellow sensor wire only with a seperate power connector from one of the 4-pin adapters.
I kept getting this fan message for a long time and I believe I had to press F1 to bypass.
After that for a while it quit with the mandatory button press, but said something like 'Previous Fan Failure.'
Now all messages are gone and it is like it was with the stock fan.
How is yours?
Posted by: Tyler | July 21, 2006 12:25 AM
With the fan warning thing...somebody suggested disabling "error on keyboard" in the bios, and it worked! I still get the error "previous fan failure" flashing up there real quick, but I don't have to press F1...so I can deal with that.
But yeah...that retention guide thing really po'd me off. Think i'll go back to building my own next time...
Posted by: Dennis Judd | July 21, 2006 07:25 AM
Thank you for the detailed pictures. They helped me install the sink in my Dell. One thing that I did different is that I left the Dell fan and I only removed the green shroud. I used a 4 to 3 pin power converter for the Zalman. This way I don't have the fan warning and the flow of air in the box is as it is recommended by Zalman. You can also use a slower, quieter Dell compatible case fan instead of the monster that comes w/ the system.
Posted by: HB | February 5, 2008 03:26 PM