Wait A Minute
(or the case for Tcase)
I’m no Dr. Phil, but I believe at some time in their life everyone comes to a point where they say, “Wait a minute, I’ve gone too far”. You know when something begins to be too all consuming and you realize that you are not acting in a sensible manner.
Perhaps you are devoting all of your time to work, or to your hobby. Maybe it is a bad habit, or even a person that you have devoted yourself to. But in any case you realize that you are not acting reasonably and that you need to step back and reevaluate what you are doing. Just let things cool down and then look at it again.
Now I bet some of you are saying to yourselves, “Steve, what are you getting ready to tell us, do I even want to know?”
Fear not. I’m not talking about me.
This weekend I was working on my computer and I realized that while it was great when I built it 2 ½ years ago, it just is not powerful enough for what I am trying to do now. I began to consider the options of upgrading, or replacing the PC and I started doing some research to see just what my best options were.
In the process I came across a little program that I downloaded called Speedfan. Speedfan is a utility that lets you know what temperature your CPU, hard drives, and video processor are running at any given moment.
Once I found out that my processor was running at 64 degrees Celsius, I needed to know what Intel recommended for that CPU. A quick check of the Intel website indicated it should be running at 60.5 C Tcase.
Now I needed to find out what Tcase is and how it relates to the reading I have. I Googled Tcase and ended up at some of the overclocking sites. There I found many ways to lower your CPU temperature, but more importantly I found a link back to Intel’s site where they explained how the processor’s thermal protection works.
You see Intel’s CPU has thermal protection built in that detects when a CPU has reached its maximum recommended temperature. When the temperature reaches this point, the CPU backs off and refuses to process requests for a millisecond or three. Then it resumes, backs off, resumes, and backs off repeatedly as needed to keep the processor at no more then the maximum recommended temperature. Intel says this process is imperceptible and only effects performance in an immeasurable way.
OK, here is where I tie this all together…
You see, that’s how you might react when you realize you are working too much. You might take your spouse out to dinner and then resume, wait a week and then take another break, then resume.
Clever how I did that isn’t it ;)
So the idea I came to, if I were to read up on these extreme methods the overclockers use I could keep my CPU from getting to the point where it backs off. Therefore, I could probably increase my performance with out upgrading my CPU.
I thought I could start with a process they call lapping. You take a piece of marble and coat it with low odor kerosene, then place a piece of wet sandpaper on it and take your processor and it’s heat sink and rub them in a single direction only, turning the work piece 90 degrees each time you increase the grit of the sandpaper until……
Wait a minute….
