Hot stuff (From Salisbury Journal)

Hot stuff

12:50pm Monday 1st October 2007

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A modern PC processor running at 3.2ghz consumes around 130 Watts - more than twice as much as a couple of light bulbs!

Think how hot two 60W bulbs would be and then imagine enclosing them in a small box. In addition, components such as video cards, memory and disk drives all add to the heat.

In order to prevent these components failing they must be cooled. Fans are usually the answer but they can be very intrusive.

It is possible to retro fit much quieter fans (see www.quietpc.com amongst others) but you might like to consider whether you really need such a fast PC if all you are using it for is word processing and accessing the Internet.

A better alternative would be to consider purchasing a PC which uses an AMD processor rather than the Intel equivalent.

AMD seem to have the knack of making processors which run considerably cooler whilst using as little as half the electricity of the Intel model.

Used in combination with other carefully selected components it is even possible to produce a PC with no need for fans at all, much quieter and better for your electricity bill as well.

Chris Stanbury - Cravenplan Computers (specialists in web design and web marketing) - www.cravenplan.co.uk Chris also acts as an expert witness on IT cases - www.it-expert-witness.co.uk

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