Replacement power supply

I have replaced the power supply in my new machine. When I figured out that my existing supply couldn't provide enough juice, it didn't take me long to decide to get a new unit. I headed over to Fry's Electronics and picked up a 650W Toughpower Thermaltake modular power supply.

It's a pretty nice power supply, sporting a 14cm fan for cooling (the bigger the fan, the slower it has to rotate to get equivalent flow, resulting in less fan noise) and modular cabling for a cleaner installation. With this new power supply, I have no problems running the extra intake fan and the rest of the components.

What next? Well, I will probably get myself one of those 750GB drives, as they are so cheap nowadays...

PC build

I was getting pretty up with the loud fans in my current Dell XPS system, so I decided to put together a new computer with quiet in mind. Don't get me wrong, my Dell system treated me well, and never gave me any problems. It's still a good system, and has all the bells and whistles: 1.5 GB memory, a recent Radeon Pro vid card, 19" LCD an extra HD, etc, etc. The problem with the design is that it uses a bunch of fans to cool off the video card, processor and power supply. Instead of using larger fans, it uses a bunch of small fans, which really makes a difference in the noise level.

The computer I built is based off of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor, running at 2.4 Ghz. Here's a list of components:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor
• 2 GB G-Skill DDR2 memory
• 320 GB Western Digital SATA drive
• Intel P35 based motherboard
• Lite-On DVD Rom and DVD-RW drive
• 3.5" internal memory card reader
• Antec Solo Case
• Gigabyte 8600 GTS Silent Pipe 3 vid card

Not quite the 'gamers machine' but it should do just fine for the amount of gaming that I actually do. The benefit to this machine is that it is very quiet, especially since the video card doesn't use any fans. Oh, I also got a 22" widescreen Samsung LCD monitor as well :)

Problem: I added an additional intake fan to the machine, and it failed to boot. Doing some research, I found that this is caused by too much power draw and the culprit is my power supply. I picked up a Rosewill 550W power supply, but I guess it just doesn't have enough oomph to cover the computer all the peripherals and the case fans. For the time being, I have disabled the intake fan and will be buying a replacement power supply sometime in the near future.

I'm very happy with the build, and the monitor is quite nice.

Water Damage

If you are familiar with Arizona, then you are probably aware of our so-called "Monsoon Season" where during the late afternoons we get rather large storm cells that bring dust storms, rain and plenty of lightning and thunder. What qualifies us entering this season is 3 consecutive days of 55 degree average dewpoint. We have had a number of heavy rain days now, and after our last big storm Tammy saw some water damage to one of the walls in the gameroom. As you can see, the paint was rather easy to peel off. I had to figure out what the source of the water was, so I hiked up into the attic to scope things out. Initial thoughts were that the vents in the roof were leaking and letting in water because of the large amounts of rain that we have had. There were indications of water coming in from the vents, and what I assumed was dripping down to an area that was obviously wet, and created a small hole in the insulation.

Tammy made a few calls to different contractors to see if we can get somebody out to give an estimate of the damage. We finally called 1-800-FLOODED. They have been doing a bunch of larger jobs in the area because of the recent rains, and informed us that our damage was very minimal in comparison to the $100K plus jobs that they are also doing. They setup a few air movers to circulate the air around the damaged wall, and also poked a few holes to improve airflow within the wall itself.

After a couple of days of drying out the wall, I noticed that the wall wasn't drying out enough as there was still a wet spot on the wall. It hasnt' been raining all that much during this timeframe, so I decided to go back up into the attic to double check the cause of the moisture. After further inspection, I found that the water was dripping from the A/C blower. Instead of the drip being caught by the emergency drip pan, it was dripping onto the insulation, and eventually destroying the wall. So, we had to call the A/C maintenance folks to get things fixed up there.

The problem ended up being a clogged P-trap. Usually, these things are supposed to last 8 - 10 years, but for some reason, this one clogged early. Above is a picture of the removed clogged area. With the P-trap clogged, the condensation drip was backing up into the unit, causing the overflow and eventual leak. Now that the P-traps are fixed (got them both replaced) there is no more water dripping into the house and we have finally dried out the wall.

Now I have to patch up the wall, retexture some spots and repaint! Whee!