Software warning

[[AK]The Beast]

I previously made a post in our private forum about United Devices' agent that you can run on your home PC for cancer/anthrax cure research. I know that Badwill, at least, is running it in addition to me. However, I have isolated this as the cause of my processor's meltdown, as it keeps your processor running at 100% to crunch the research. The last reading I got before it died was 210 degrees on the processor--with an Antec jet fan/heatsink combo attached with a generous amount of thermal compound, a PCI slot exhaust fan, a front intake fan all running at full blast. Now, a faster processor with the same hardware runs at least 60 degrees cooler--at least until I start up the UD agent. Within two minutes, the temperature goes up ~15-20 degrees F.

However, this doesn't appear to be true of our FTP and Teamsound server, which is a Pentium 4 running with no additional cooling mods. The bottom line is: don't run the UD agent without monitoring your CPU's temperature.

[Badwill]

Thanks for the update. I uninstalled the UD agent after a few weeks due to decreased performance and fear of unauthorized access to my computer. It was a great idea but I'm a little wary of prgrams like that.
BTW How do you monitor your temperature. Is it built in or do I need a thermostat or thermometer?

[[AK]The Beast]

My motherboard has temperature sensors built in, including one within the processor socket that touches the underside of my CPU. (In fact, when my processor overheated, part of the plastic coating on this sensor melted and stuck to the CPU!) There's also two sensors at different points on the mobo itself. I can view the current temperature from within my BIOS sensor, and I use a freeware utility called Speedfan to monitor my CPU and motherboard temperature, as well as the RPMs of my fans, all in realtime, under Windows. The CNet download for it is down, so I've uploaded it to our FTP server. It's in a new directory called Utilities; you'll need to login with the password to get at it.