Hi, On 11/5/12, John G Heim <jheim@math.wisc.edu> wrote:
I'm pretty sure that you cannot tell how to orient an AMD processor without sight. I can't say for sure because I don't build machines every day. Could be I am missing something. I'm not sure what it means that Intel processors are keyed. Does that mean you can tell how to orient them by feel? If so, they are ahead of AMD processors in that regard.
I don't want to be too negative here. After all, I build all my own machines. But I don't think its much of a consolation to say that you haven't broken any systems while installing the heat sync once you learned how to do it. That can be a kind of expensive learning curve. My experience has been that the processor and heat sync combination change often enough for your knowledge on how to do one might not help much the next time. It seems like I have to figure it out again each time. But as I said, typically, I build myself a new machine only about once every 3 years. You're right really. I wouldn't ever suggest anyone go out and buy a lode of expensive parts and try to put them together without
You can't orientate them so that you know that they will fit in the socket, but you'll be able to tell if you've put it in the wrong way because it just won't fall into place. Intels are possible to tell by feel, 2 sides of the CPU will have a little hole in them and assuming the clip is on the left hand side of the socket, the holes should be near the clip - one should be on the side nearest you and the other will be oppersit that. I know that was a pretty poor explanation; I'll try to get a podcast out over christmas where I will (hopefully) explain it a bit better. practicing first on older hardware. Back when I first started learning (2006 2007) there wasn't really anything accessible that related to PC building so I largely taught myself. Perhaps if I had made more use of sites like Youtube I wouldn't have made as many mistakes as I did but ultimately I hope I've learnt from them all. I have a feeling that a sighted person would probably be able to get away with it if they used a stock heatsync; there are some great tutorial videos around these days and you can get more or less a step by step using a combination of the case and motherboard manuals. You can get some very cheap second hand computers off eBay or a free one off Freecycle to practice with if you want; you need to spend a small enough amount of money that you'll feel comfortable chalking the investment up as a lesson learnt if you were to break the system. What you need to try and teach yourself is the ability to look at a system regardless of the components in it and say ok, so I'm pretty sure this massive aftermarket heatsync is secured like this; the hard drive's mounted in a bit of a nonstandard way but I'm pretty sure it'll come out if I unscrew this etc etc. Don't take apart a system and say ok, now I know how to remove a motherboard from an Optiplex GX270 and how to remove a socket 478 heatsync - that stuff will help, but concentrate on getting good at using a screwdriver and try to develop an instinct about how things work and how they should be taken apart that you can then apply to any system that you look at. I practiced on some very old systems; socket 370 (P3) and socket A/462 (Old AMD's like the Duran and Athlon) The heatsyncs on both of these sockets are a real pain to remove; there is a tiny clip that you need to push down & forwards at the same time and I found that the best way to do this was with a flathead. Unfortunately, on the systems that I broke, the flathead would slip and then scrape across the board which I'm assuming damaged some of the traces which made the system not post. This was extremely frustrating to me; at the time, I had a few parcially sighted friends who had started building but I was always the "computer person" in our group and it upset me that my friends who had a comparitively small amount of computer related knolige were able to build a system quicker than I could and without breaking it. My understanding is that a lot of the build process is common sense if you are sighted; these people didn't really understand what each part did, but they'd scene enough computers to know how it should be installed. Again, all old hardware, so we didn't really mind if we messed something up. The installation methods for stock Intel and Amd heatsyncs have stayed fairly standard for a while; Intel introduced socket 775 in 2005? and whilst the pin count on their CPU's has changed, their heatsyncs haven't that much. In fact, in a pinch, you can (But really shouldn't) force an old socket 775 heatsync to be installed on a new socket 1155 motherboard. It should be capable of cooling any 1155 CPU the TDP's of some of the older 775 CPU's like the Q6600 were pretty high so it shouldn't be a problem, but the distance between the holes that the flimsy plastic pins go into has changed slightly. AMD's have (As far as I'm aware) been fairly alike for around the same amount of time. I guess it depends on what you do really. I more or less know my away around server 2003 and Ubuntu server but I wouldn't say I'm good at it at all; most of the people on this list will know far more about it than I do but on the other hand, most people on the list won't be able to replace a laptops motherboard.
My recommendation is if anyone is considering building their own machine, definitely go for it. You might consider getting help installing the processor and heat sync. The rest just takes some thought and carefulness. You really can't screw it up if you study up a little first and take your time.
One good thing is that there is about a million UTube videos on installing the processor and heat sync. Some of them have pretty good audio descriptions. Some don't. But if you listen to enough of them, you can probably figure it out.
Completely agree. Without meaning to turn this into your typical amazing blind person story, I think the main reason why I got so into it was because of the amount of people that told me that I wouldn't be able to build or that I would but it would take me a month or so to build a system. It took time - lots of time, but I've advised quite a few of the skeptics about hardware problems now and as far as I know none of them are able to do anything with laptops other than your usual hard drive & ram replacements. Keep at it and if anyone has any questions, feel free to write on or off list. Hopefully I'll put something out over christmas to help everyone. Cheers, Ben.