Dell complaints

[KE7EHA]

Hello, everyone.

Well, it's that time again. My dell has died yet once more. Result: another motherboard. I sure do attract these hardware failures.

Anyway, after a period of diagnosis, using one of my friend's spare parts [he just updated to core 2, the bastard] we arrived at the fact that the motherboard wasn't working.

How did I arrive at this diagnosis? Easy: I used a friend's motherboard and cobbled together a working system with all my peripherals and crap in it. We even took pictures, and I'd like to share them with you:





and with me in the shot, expressing a sense of accomplishment



These repulsively delicious photos were taken by my friend Alan, aka piman.

Anyway, back to the story.

I called into Dell hardware support. After a short [read: long and painful and spotted with crappy muzak] time on the phone [40 min] I got another motherboard mailed to a tech, not me. this kinda made me angry, as this was the same guy who damaged one of my peripheral cards on an earlier call [SB Audigy].

I replaced the motherboard [after a period of hemming and hawing with the 'tech'] and now the machine works

Oh, and BTW, the thermal paste that Dell ships is absolute and utter shit. I looked up the specs, on www.microsi.com, and found that the thermal conductivity was 6w/m°K, whereas Arctic Silver 5, which retails for about $8 for a .5 oz tube, has a thermal conductivity of 350000W/m°C, or about 40000 times greater than the Dell provided paste. Just thought I'd pass that along.
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"The art of Engineering is knowing what you can safely ignore." -Dr. H. Hess

[diashto]

[KE7EHA]

C and K have the same scale, just like F and R. I really see no difference, and if you changed between the two, you'd only serve to increase the number in the denominator of the Shin-Etsu compound, decreasing it's conductivity.

Well, I guess it'd work alright, if the 'technicians' could apply thermal paste correctly. Look, do NOT use the entire syringe. That's probably enough for 3 CPU's and several northbridge heatsinks, not a single CPU. However, I think that they are trained to just ram down the plunger, and call it good [sometimes, that's how it appears]
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"The art of Engineering is knowing what you can safely ignore." -Dr. H. Hess

[Starman97]

like the Apple Laptops
Those pictures made me laugh so hard, it looked like they had put the stuff on with a caulk gun. The entire CPU package had a layer of spooge on it, it was oozing out onto the motherboard. This is on exposed die parts, no heat spreader. Apple(Foxconn) was doing this, people were getting brand new laptops and opening them up when they overheated and finding 1/2 oz of what looked like Arctic Silver smeared all over the CPU, Vid GPU and Northbridge.

[engrpiman]

so that is were my motherboard went. you ..would risk a good board by installing dell parts ... wait wait i getting something

i get it Asus forever Foxcon/ dell for trash
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[KE7EHA]

Welcome to you, Alan. I do agree, it nseems, at least with my experiences, that Foxconn/Dell skimps on the quality of the important parts of the motherboard, such as the power converters and heatsinks and such.

What are you talking about? You volunteered the use of that board, and you have it back too! Besides, [as you know] the only things put on that board were wither purchased by me or wuality hardware, made by intel and WD.

To Starman, you do know that you need to cover the entire die with thermal compound to correctly cool the entire part? Actually, bare FC packages would be superior, as they offer less thermal resistance between the silicon and the heatsink. The detriment of bare FC packages is that they are slightly harder to cool uniformly, and it is possible to crack the die if you apply unbalanced forces onto the chip.

Oh, and AS5 is not electrically conductive. However, they probably didn't use AS5 on the apples, so I wouldn't count on anyone using AS5 in any OEM computer, as it is more expensive than pastes with less cooling ability.
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"The art of Engineering is knowing what you can safely ignore." -Dr. H. Hess

[engrpiman]

i was joking about the MB
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[darkangel]

KE7EHA, maybe you should consider clearning that room of yours. might help keep shit from breaking.