The Home of Tom & Morven

I just realised I hadn’t put up the few photos I took when I did the Adelaide Motorbike Christmas Charity Toy Run with Damien in December. I just realised due to getting back into mountain biking I haven’t actually been for a weekend motorbike ride since last year! Click on the photo below to go to the album with a few other photos.

Warning: if you’re not a computer g33k don’t bother reading this post, you just won’t understand!

In December, I started playing a little more of the game Colin McRae Rally: Dirt. However, I decided that my beast of a machine (refer here, here, & here) wasn’t performing quite fast enough for maximum off-road rally driving pleasure. Thus, my recent overclocking obsession came to be!

Basically, I overclocked my Q6600 B3 revision Intel Quad Core CPU from the stock 2.4GHz speed to 2.6GHz. However, after countless hours upon hours of running CPU stress testing (specifically, Prime95 v25.6 build #2), and comparing to temperatures measured by other people with almost exactly the same hardware configurations, I came to the conclusion that I am unlucky to be one that has received a CPU chip that just runs at a hotter temperature than the average manufactured chip. Upon exhaustive research through overclocking forums on the net, I discovered that lapping (making something flat via sanding) the Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPU is generally a very beneficial thing to do for increasing the thermal transfer of the CPU cover to the heatsink. I suspect the manufacturing process that Intel use to fix the CPU cover to the cores causes the cover to bend slightly. Consequently, the outside edges of the CPU cover (and a section in the middle) are slightly raised from the rest of the cover, leading to big air gaps that require filling with thermal paste in order to transfer heat half reasonably. Since it is the outside edge that is most raised, I can see why my CPU heatsink created a big air-gap when it was installed. This definitely contributes to a hotter CPU, which means less overclocking is possible before you risk overheating it.

I used the razorblade with torch behind it technique to determine how flat both surfaces really were, but I found that the razorblade wasn’t rigid enough to provide consistency for a good idea of how much curvature existed. The heatsink seemed relatively flat already, but the CPU definitely had big gaps of light coming through. Regardless, I decided to lap the heatsink so I could practise my lapping technique before doing the CPU.

I conducted the lapping process using a large piece of tempered glass (compliments of Scoobth) which I used to tape the wet-and-dry sandpaper on for a flat surface. I used a spray bottle of water to keep the sandpaper moist at all times. The sandpaper grit sizes I used were 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, and 1200.

The most time consuming stage was using the very coarse 200 grit size, just to get the surfaces flat before I could progressively smooth them down. I only had 1 piece of each grit size for the CPU, and 1 piece of each grit size for the heatsink, and all of the sandpaper became too worn for them to be worthwhile using anymore. If I were to do it again I would have a lot more sandpaper handy because once it wears down, the efficiency of the sanding action decreases dramatically and you really just waste time.

I couldn’t work out how to remove the thermal plate surface from the heat-pipes of the Scythe Ninja heatsink, which made for a very high centre of gravity as the complete unit slid over the sandpaper. Consequently I found it difficult to stop the heatsink from shuddering.

The CPU was much easier to sand because as a flat plate it has a very low centre of gravity. I held it with the black piece of protective plastic that it came with, so that way I didn’t touch any of the sensitive side of the unit. You can see after starting to sand, the edges of the unit were scratching away (nice shiny silver instead of a matte finish). It took a large amount of sanding to actually notice this. After a while, you could notice a circle in the middle also start to sand away

I kept using the 200 grit sized sandpaper up until about this stage where I switched to the 400 grit sized because the 200 grit had completely worn out! Probably a good idea anyway, because there wasn’t much sanding now at this stage to get it completely flat.

By the time I got to about here, the 400 grit paper was also fairly worn out, but I kept going until all the plate was uniformly shiny and all of the matte surface had gone. I read on a few forums that the silver surface is a nickel plating. The only reason I can think of why nickel plating would be used on a CPU cover would be for corrosion resistance, because I would imagine corrosion of (what appears to be) copper underneath the nickel plating would have a very low thermal conductivity.

Somewhere at about this stage, I noticed a red liquid appearing on the sandpaper. It was blood from my finger, which I didn’t feel was being sanded to the flesh as my hand was numb from holding the CPU! Lesson to be learned: keep lots of fresh sandpaper handy so you don’t have to waste time sanding with worn out sandpaper!

Eventually, after going through all the grades of sandpaper, the end result!

I then cleaned the surfaces using a few drops of the Arctic Silver ArctiClean product (compliments of Scoobth) and applied a line of Arctic Silver ArcticSilver5.
I applied the line of AS5 as the instructions suggested, although I think the instructions would be written with the non-flat surface of the Core 2 Quad Q6600 in mind, and I should probably have used a much thinner line.

Next time I ever do it I would definitely still use it in a line for the purpose of ensuring all cores have good contact in the immediate vicinity, but just used a lot less. It would perhaps have been easier to apply if I heated the AS5 liquid up somehow. Not in the microwave as it contains metal particles, but perhaps out in the hot Australian sun or in the oven on a maximum of 30 degrees celcius. The AS5 compound probably doesn’t reduce in viscosity when it heats up, but it would be worth a try.

The core temperatures of the CPU instantly ran about 10 degrees celcius lower, and after a few thermal cycles and a few days about 12 degrees celcius lower. I tested this temperature drop using ambient temperature that was plus or minus 2 degrees celcius, and taking measurements using SpeedFan & CoreTemp after about 1 hour of Prime95 v25.6 build #2 using the small FFT torture test.

I was then able to overclock my CPU to 2.7GHz, but the cores were starting to run in the red zone (above the maximum rated temperature of 71 degrees Celcius) so I also used another overclocking hardware modification called the pencil Vdroop mod. This mod involves using a graphite pencil to shade over a (I think the component was a) resistor to effectively lower the resistance by adding another resistor (the conductive graphite) in parallel. Now although I’m a qualified Mechatronic engineer, I have absolutely no idea what any of the circuitry on the mainboard does, so I was taking a giant leap of faith from fellow overclockers on the internet! The idea is you keep lowering the resistance until the voltage across the CPU core(s) is exactly the same voltage regardless of whether or not the CPU is experiencing a full load or not. That is, there is not voltage drop (aka droop) when the CPU is under computational load. The bad side of this is temperatures immediately sky-rocket when you start to next apply computational load because the voltage doesn’t decrease at the same time. So, the idea is to lower the overall voltage to compensate. The end effect is increased voltage stability of the CPU due to it not fluctuating, which means the CPU is less likely to produce errors, and there is less heat generated at idle capacity. It definitely helped to decrease the temperature of my cores under load, which is particularly important for this computer as it’s used to do 24/7/ number crunching for Team_Bammann.

So I now have a 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad running at 2.7GHz, at a lower temperature than it was before! I’ve also upgraded all of the case fans to medium speed Scythe S-Flex fans, and the fan for the CPU heatsink to the high speed Scythe S-Flex fan. So there is also more airflow but with less noise, and this also further cools the CPU cores by another couple degrees.

This definitely helped the performance of the Colin McRae: Dirt game, but what REALLY helped the performance of the game was adding an extra 2Gb of RAM to a total of 4Gb. Unfortunately I can only use 3.0Gb due to the Vista 32bit limitation with my mainboard and graphics card, so an effective total of 3Gb. This SERIOUSLY increased the gaming performance, completely eliminating the stuttering that was occuring at times when lots of cars were on the track. What I realise now is that Windows Vista Ultimate uses so much RAM that 2Gb is just not enough for computer games. I expect that if you want to get serious about a beast of a gaming machine with a Vista installation, you need to go for 64bit and get a minimum of 4Gb.

I then also added (as I mentioned in a previous post) the Logitech Momo steering wheel so that I can really enjoy the new gaming beast I have.

SWK has pointed out to me that in my last post, the term “blackboys” could be interpreted as somewhat politically incorrect. I use the term “blackboys” to describe the Xanthorrhoea plant, otherwise known as Yakka. Yakka is a word that seems to have come from the Kaurna people, the native Aboriginals to the Adelaide Plains. Until the political incorrectness of it had been pointed out to me, I liked the term “blackboy” because it reminds me that most of the yakkas around in the national parks have probably been there since before the Early Settlers came to the Adelaide Plains in 1831. It is not uncommon to find Yakkas that are over two hundred years old. I used to think the term “blackboys” would have come about because the white people would have called the yakkas this as they looked like aboriginal children - and that’s why I liked the term! But, as it was pointed out to me they were quite possibly termed this in a not so good context - not to mention the politically incorrectness of calling a dark skinned person (in relation to a American natives) a boy, which is something I also hadn’t heard about! I won’t go back through my blog and correct myself, as I want my unknowing political correctness to remain in the history of my blog to remind me of how as times change, society learns about how things that we have done in the past become unacceptable by tomorrows standards. This is a good thing!

Whilst I’m at it, I would like to take the opportunity to show-off how good our lawn is looking, as I was explaining in my last post.

I didn’t stop blogging, I’ve just had higher priorities in the last few months. Since I last posted anything substantial, I’ve been doing a lot, and I will attempt to catch up with what I’ve been up to in this post. SWK will be proud!

In my last post I mentioned I was going to do the Foxy1000 cross country mountain bike endurance race with Nick. We did the 100km race (50km each) but it was much harder than I anticipated. The fact that I had to ride 50km was okay, and the difficulty of the terrain wasn’t too bad although the track did include the Fox Creek downhill trail which I found doing very scary, but was proud that I only dismounted I think at two spots on this downhill track. The reason I had to dismount twice is because at one spot there was a drop-off which you had to negotiate whilst doing a corner on a slope (hard to explain) and another spot where there was just a massive drop-in. When I say drop-in, imagine a slope that’s about 60 degrees below horizontal for several metres! I would possibly attempt these obstacles if I hadn’t already ridden flat-out for about an hour, and didn’t have arms that were worn out and/or had time to stop and adjust my seat-post such that my centre of gravity was more reasonable. But at the end of the day, the idea of a race is to get from A to B as fast as you can, and if it’s on average quicker to get off the bike than to attempt something you’re not confident doing and risk injuring yourself or your bike, then you might as well! (However this hasn’t stopped me on at least one occasion recently which I’ll get to later!) Nick and I took turns at doing 2 x 25km laps each (100km total) and each lap involved 1000m of vertical ascent. Half way through my second lap, I had major cramp in my legs from dehydration. I don’t know how I got dehydrated because I was drinking by the bucket loads after my first lap, and was well hydrated before the first lap even started. I guess it was a hot day. The last 10km was very painful and difficult because of the cramp, but eventually I finished and we came 3rd in the category of Men’s Duo so it was very much worth it! We have been riding together on most weekends usually doing at least 30km rides, and recently becoming closer to 50km rides on some occasions. We hope to do quite well in the 2008 Foxy1000 race. Who knows, maybe in 2009 we might even both race solo! But I much prefer the team idea - besides, Nick is faster than me… at the moment I say “at the moment”, because I’ve been riding my road bike a little bit lately on my trainer to try and build up my leg muscle which is my major weakness from several years of endurance running which stripped me away from leg muscle.

Since the Foxy1000, apart from weekend rides with Nick (mostly from the city, up to and around Eagle Park) we’ve also been doing the Summer Series races. I find the night races much to fast-paced for my liking, because for my category (Sports Men, which is “C” grade) I generally do 3 laps of about 5km. It sounds like a lot, but it’s all over within 45 to 60 minutes. Since my strength is endurance (i.e. 50km+) I struggle with the sprinting, and my heart rate averages 180bpm (minimum 170bpm, maximum 187bpm). When riding up a hill at 185bpm+ I feel like my heart is going to explode! For this reason I don’t look forward to doing the race, I look forward to completing the race! And it is a good feeling to achieve finishing. The first night race of this summer season was at Flinders Uni. My tactic was to go easy at the start to avoid any 185bpm+ activity in the first two laps. Unfortunately this meant I was stuck behind a couple slow(ish) riders who didn’t let me past. After the first 5 minutes there was an opportunity for me to overtake on a downhill section on a fire-track (i.e. a track designed for a 4WD vehicle to access) which was covered in blue gypsonite crushed rock. Because I built up a lot of speed in an effort to pass the guy before the bottom of the track which turned back into a single track, I wasn’t able to take the corner at the bottom. I think a combination of me going way too fast, my tyre pressure too high, and the rebound dampening of my suspension all worked against me, and although I sort of made the corner after turning right on to the bridge, I was sliding sideways off of the bridge, and in fact slid off into the rocks which formed the bridge. (I call it a bridge, but it’s really just a pile of boulders with finer gravel on top to allow the water to pass through. I snapped the buckle off of my shoe so wasn’t able to continue the race, and I seriously gashed my hip and elbow which I was paying the price for over the next month.

The second night race of the season was at Eagle Park, and I did okay physically but had a flat tyre towards the end, so overall got a poor time. The third race was again at Eagle Park last night, and I think the training I had been doing has only just started to pay off. Unfortunately, I had a small crash due to my front wheel sliding off the track in a sandy patch on a corner. I was okay and didn’t lose too much time, but I bent my rear derallieur which meant that my chain kept slipping into my wheel between the spokes and rear cassette.

This happened about 6 times during the remainder of the race, and meant each time I had to get off and pull it back on again, costing about 20 seconds each time. Also I kept losing the gear I was in on most climbs, which made me lose traction on many occasions which cost me a few more minutes overall. Overall I came 6th in my Sports Men category, which was fairly satisfying, even if there weren’t many more than 6! I will take my bike back to the store on Monday and get a yearly overhaul done, even if I can fix it myself. It’s probably about time I had the suspension serviced anyway. After the race last night I went to the Lotus Lounge for going away drinks for a mutual friend of Morven and myself, Monica. It was great to see lots of our friends all together in one place having a good time, but it’s weird going out without Morv! (I’ll explain later in this post where she is at the moment). After the Lotus Lounge, I headed over to The Worlds End bar with a couple uni mates (including Nick who I raced with). Good times were had, but I went home before everyone else because my elbow was oozing yucky stuff from when I slid on the dirt in the race. It is mildly amusing that the scrapes I have from last night are in exactly the same spot as the first summer series race where I stacked it, but nowhere near as bad as the first stack!

In October I went to an 80’s night a HQ Nightclub with Morven and her friends. It was to celebrate the birthday of FreshFM radio station. It was a good night, but we were the only people that actually dressed up in 80’s gear! Okay well there were probably about a dozen others that made an effort to dress up, and I can’t really say that I dressed up myself but Morven and her friends did so I felt ripped off and we sort of looked silly. Every now and then you would see someone from the crowd of people dressed in classic 80’s gear. I misunderstood what a barman said at one stage and ended up accidentally ordering 5 different cocktails instead of one! I didn’t mind, we drank them all!

Really the main reason I haven’t been blogging in the last 5 months is because my server hasn’t really been working anyway! Apache (the main part of the webserver) just kept crashing, and not loading after the computer rebooted like it always did before I upgraded to this new computer. Over the last week I’ve updated Wordpress, Gallery, all of my Wordpress plugins, and the webserver software XAMPP. I found it difficult to upgrade my XAMPP installation, and I will write about this upgrade process in a seperate post at least for my own future reference! I took me a VERY long time to work out why Apache wasn’t booting on startup, and I’ve found that the Apache service under Windows Vista doesn’t load under the LocalSystem or Administrator account, I had to create a seperate user account to run it under. This is a problem attributed to the UAC (User Account Control) system of Windows Vista. I will also write about this in a seperate post.

I had a really nice break from work between Christmas and New Years. Christmas was mostly spent with Morven’s family and family friends. For Christmas Morven gave me a bike chain bracelet. I was so happy to unwrap that gift, as I used to have one as a kid (that I had found on the ground with a broken link and repaired it myself) but lost it somewhere along the line and was really upset. Our family was fortunate to receive a CD from my younger cousin in Melbourne, who is manager and website guru for a band called Men Without Pants. We were given their debut album GhosTrain. I don’t know how to describe it but I’ll give it a shot: very cool jazz! Really not very descriptive, but I like the sound effects they use, coupled with the cool, semi-philosophical chilled-out lyrics/vocals. You can listen to my favourite track by clicking on the play button.

For the very low price they are asking for the CD (AUD$10) I can’t recommend any more just buying a copy or three or more (for gifts). You can listen to their music on the website too, so go check it out! (Please note I have special permission to play this song on my blog, it is copyright. Please go to their website if you want to hear more.) The band is two of my cousin Carl’s high-school classmates in Melbourne. Two very talented musicians whom I’m sure will go a very long way with their music careers. My cousin Carl is pretty talented too with maths and website technologies, although I have to question his sense of humour given he just sent me this URL to a comic as I’m writing this paragraph which is quite bizarre. Having said that I did laugh profusely after reading it. It’s disturbing how similar Carl and I are!

Over Christmas, I decided that my computer wasn’t performing well enough for my liking (even after upgrading it) with playing Colin McRae Rally Dirt, so I did my research, learned how to overclock my computer (which I will also write about in a separate post). Doing this, and adding a soundcard (instead of using the onboard sound) and adding more RAM has significantly increased my gaming experience, as has purchasing a Logitech Momo steering wheel and pedal set! There is so much enjoyment that can be had driving rally cars in such a realistic rally car simulator game, with amazing visual and effects, using a reasonably realistic steering wheel and pedal set! I’m looking forward to getting Morven “behind the wheel” as she has been known to enjoy a bit of the rally car driving game. She doesn’t like driving using the keyboard, but I haven’t had any alternative up until now. Maybe she’ll perform better using the wheel set and stop using the hand brake so much - who knows! She hasn’t actually seen it yet because I only got it recently after she left.

Morven is doing part of her work placement in a hospital at Stoke on Trent, England. She left nearly two weeks ago (such a long time to be without my lady!) and I will be going and meeting her in London on her last day of work. We will spend two nights in London in an expensive hotel right slap bang in the centre of London, then four nights in Paris again in the slap bang centre of Paris in a very expensive hotel! The last night of Paris will be Valentine’s day, so it should be a very romantic holiday You can check out a map of where we’re going and staying.

Today, after from updating my blog I’m taking it rather easy. I’ve done some odd jobs including fixing a shower-head mount, a shower curtain rail, our letter box lid that had broken off, and a rail for a window blind that had popped out of the wall. I’ve been keeping our lawn (Santa Anna Couch) in admirable condition despite the drought. It’s surprising me how little water we can get away with for watering our lawn and keeping it amazingly lush green despite the fact we’re going through a drought. Despite the current water restrictions of a maximum of 3 hours watering per week, we only water the lawn for 1 hour per week. I think the trick to keeping it lush green is to let the lawn grow longer when a heat wave is happening, and cut it back to normal length again after the heat wave. The other trick is to use fertiliser as recommended to keep the roots of the lawn strong, but use organic fertiliser because it won’t burn the lawn if you don’t water it in very well. This way you can apply the organic fertiliser just before rain (if you’re lucky enough to get any). A week or two after fertilising, check for weeds in the lawn. The other reason for using an organic based fertiliser over chemical fertiliser is it is better for the environment, and requires less water to manufacture it. So if you are using chemical fertiliser to keep your roots strong to save water overall, think again! Chemical fertilisers require ridiculous amounts of water to manufacture. Also any weeds will suck out water from the topsoil, so use a cover-spray appropriate to whatever weeds you have. I’ve also been regularly coring the lawn, and using a “Wetta-soil” powder which holds water in the soil after the rain, increasing the time it takes for the water to evaporate back into the heat of the harsh Australian sun. I’ve noticed that the Windsor Green couch has died off in the drought, whilst the Santa Anna Couch has stayed strong! Paul Munn personally recommended to me at his store to use Windsor Green Couch because it tolerates drought conditions better than Santa Anna, but I suspect this was just a sales pitch (unless we have an uncommon soil type/mixture). I would highly recommend to anyone in Adelaide to use Santa Anna couch over Windsor Green (update: discussion continued in a later post.

I should also write about my latest batch of black boys. After a few months now, my latest batch of black boy seedlings (xanthorrea’s) are about 3cm to 10cm tall. Unlike last time where they all died after leaving them in the sun, I’ve been keeping them mostly in the shade, and always constantly moist. I don’t have much experience with growing seedlings of anything but I expect this is a requirement for most seedlings. I am surprised though that black boys in particular are so sensitive to direct sunlight.