Like She Was New!

What an eventful day.

The Dell on-site engineer came down to replace the fan and heatsink assembly, and I learnt a few things.

1. Dust was the true killer;
2. The heat pipes ran keyboard side up, in total inversion from most other systems, explaining the finger frying;
3. The fans were really integrated with the heat sinks;
4. The replacement of this assembly was as good as having a repaste job;
5. Most of the upper half of the flat-laying part of Eileen-II are just vents, so air blowing through all of them has no risk of clogging the way old laptops were; and
6. Daughter boards everywhere despite the motherboard being more complicated than I had ever seen.

The dust was of a very uniform fineness that looked awfully like the kind of concrete dust one would see from a construction site, and not the kind of skin-dust that is the more normal.

Armed with the new knowledge and assurance from the on-site engineer, I now have a better way of preventing all that weird frictional vibration thing from fans that were dust-imbalanced.

The difference was pretty dramatic, before and after the assembly change. I am getting 40--46× multipliers even on full load with the PROCHOT limit of 83°C that I had set. The idle temperature is now roughly 40°C at an ambient temperature of about 27°C, which is about 4--7°C lower than before.

There was little throttling when I was running Minecraft at 32 chunk rendering distance (just for fun), and the lag spikes that I was seeing before even with Iris Shaders (on 12 chunks rendering) was much lower.

It's like Eileen-II was brand new all over again. And now, to monitor things before I confirm the closure of the ticket.

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I also managed to set up a servicing date next week for Aurelia, my artisan-quality concert flute. She's doing well, just that she has missed her annual Clean, Oil, and Adjust (COA) session. I was tempted to bring S.O.S. and maybe Azumi down too, but I just wanted to keep it simple. Those two (and maybe Picc) can go for their COA next year instead.

I might need to bring Davie down for a look-see by Sean though... one of the pads looked like its bladder had ripped. Still need to arrange a date with him for that.

If you are bloody confused, do not be afraid.

I can't believe that Aurelia is already 2 years old, and that Azumi has been with me for more than a decade. Time does seem to fly along.

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I'm thinking I might want to go for some sushi tomorrow for late lunch/early dinner; I've been craving for sushi for a while, so it might be time to satisfy that craving.

NaNoWriMo has been going well; I've already busted the 25k milestone, and have ``only'' written 23/50 ways to die. It's very cathartic despite its macabre nature; it really puts things into perspective.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Ironically, I am in the middle of replaying Cthulhu Saves the World, which does not need the higher powered computational powers that the refreshed heat sink+fan assembly provides.

Till the next update.