Keeping Amigas up and running

As I type this on my X1000, I can hear fans laboring to maintain speed.
Even though the X1000 is a "fairly new" computer.. it's getting close to ten years old now.. (I think.?)

So there's a few things we must do that are not normal for the disposable generation:

My clock battery has probably only been changed twice. Most likely because I usually keep the X1000 powered up 24/7, so load on the battery is as close to zero as we will find.

The fan on the CPU cooler has already been changed once. While the replacement was good quality, it was not an exact fit. despite cleaning it recently it IS making a bit more noise than I am happy with. Tomorrow a much quieter (Noctua) replacement will arrive.
Do these PA6T's really need a fan on the heatsink at all? Since the processor is so "low powered", it seems a good option for passive cooling.. But no, I'm not willing to risk my X on testing. ;)

The "original equipment" HD4650 graphics card is still installed. I tried a newer high powered model once, but it just made too much noise and heat, so the same card my X shipped with has been running. I've been able to clean the fan enough to keep it going for ten years now, but it's finally just too worn out. Good news: I found an "exact replacement" fan, but it's coming on a slow boat from China. Delivery expected in about a month.

Rather than risk my HD4650, I'll be shutting off the X1000 when it's not in use for a couple weeks, until the replacement arrives. I am still convinced that keeping a computer on 24/7 is usually the best bet, since coming up to temperature and cooling repeatedly causes mechanical stress, not just between components and the board, but inside the chips as well.

It occurs to me that _most_ users of more common computers never even change the clock battery. The expected life cycle of a computer is so short nowadays.

So I guess replacing batteries and fans is just part of the cost of keeping computers alive forever... :)

If anyone else happens to need an "original" fan for a Gigabyte HD4650, I can pass along the vendor and part number I found.

If there is a proven reliable passive heatsink for the X1000, I'd love to know more about it.

And migrating to SSDs will remove another "moving part" prone to failure. I remember the old Seagate SCSI drives that needed a "thump" to get them spinning. Good Times.

I don't expect my X to live forever, but with a bit of care it might outlive me.
;)

@LyleHaze

Macrom is unfortunately out of buisness, but he did an extremely cool passive cooling for the X.

I have this beast in since three years now.
Together with a passively cooled RadeonHD7750 the only noise is coming from the case fans now.

Unfortunately that thing doesn't work out of the box, Marcus did some alterations to make it fit in the X.

Here is the revelation thread...unfortunately no more pics and the links are of course dead.

@LyleHaze

I am using a Marcom CPU cooler on the X1000 too.
It's not the passive cooled one but another model.

I swapped the fan with a BeQuiet model and it's so quiet I can not hear it.
The noise Db App I have on the phone does not hear it either.

Just to give an idea of the sensibility of the App, if have the phone at about 1m from the cloth mouse pad, and I just barely touch the mousepad and wiggle with the finger, the app registers an increase of noise.

Should you need to change the CPU Cooler in future, I have a couple of Macrom's Coolers stored somewhere.

About the graphics cards.. IIRC the new RadeonRX driver does support lowering the power consumption of the cards and the card should then decrease the fan speed. I searched on Hans de Ruiters websites but could not find the news anymore.

@Amigo1

Quote:
That's true. This RX card is absolutely quiet in my X5000 system. It also produces very little heat:
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560

@trixie

Nice! :))
Thanks for the tip! I've noted the card on my To-Buy list. The X5000 has a Radeon R7 250 installed at the moment.

@Amigo1

Oh, one more thing. There are two versions of the Sapphire RX 560: a regular model, and a low-power one (marketed as "the 45W" version). As the packing is the same for both models, make sure your dealer sells you the 45 Watt version.

@Amigo1

Quote:
Yes, the RadeonRX driver has dynamic power management, so it'll automatically adjust the clocks and voltages based on how hard the GPU has to work.

We didn't intend to implement power management just yet, uploading the microcode is done via the coprocessor responsible for power management on newer GPUs. The microcode is needed in order to use the GPU. So, we decided to fully implement dynamic power management. That roughly doubled the work required to get v1 of the driver done.

Now if only someone could implement dynamic power management for the CPU and the rest of the system...

Hans

@LyleHaze

I've only replaced my CMOS battery once recently and I personally don't believe in keeping anything on 24/7..other than my fridge lol

Replacing the crappy load CPU fan definitely helped alot on noise and heat CPU heat reduction. Here's the original threadoriginal thread post from 2015 and install details on my blog

check with AmigaOnTheLake if they have any stock left or check with Amigo1 on this thread

btw, I still have an old Cheetah SCSI HD in my A1200 Tower that just screams when it's loading up a large file or a alot of small files...if my furnace ever gives out in winter I can just use use the heat from my 1200 to be comfortable

@328gts

I made a custom solution for my X1000 that involved laser cutting two pieces of plastic to fit a regular 90mm pc heatpipe fan to the x1000 holes.While giving optimal cooling and noise, it blocks the two dimm sockets near the CPU from being used.

@trixie

Quote:
I still have not looked into it.. Many thanks for the hint!


edit: Oh well I had already replied..