This week, I had planned to reinstall the home desktop CPU. It was running at 85°C. Way too hot for a Pentium-D 2.8 GHz which apparently should run at a maximum of 64°C. I guess I should be thankful for Intel throttling which surely has prevented the CPU from frying. Ilango, who is one of my friends in Chennai, asked me to reinstall it, and to make sure the heatsink pins make a click sound.
So, I opened it up, and found spots where the thermal grease was not properly coated. With ample funds in hand, rushed to the Richy Street in Chennai, ready to buy some Artic Silver (which I heard is the best and quite costly). Most vendors did not have any in stock – no arctic silver and no material close to thermal paste. They were offering me heat-sink and fan combinations which cost Rs. 150-250. Since my heatsink had a copper bottom and the fan was ok, I didn’t buy any.
Finally, one shop offered me some content in a syringe costing Rs. 5. It contained zinc(II) oxide material. Looked Intel original, so bought it.
Applying it was tricky. I ended up getting more than half the material on my fingers. Sticky stuff – no wonder it’s called grease. Luckily the zinc is not toxic. Not as bad as super glue, but being a sticky grease, tough to get it off.
After re-installing, temperatures are down. The heatsink wasn’t properly installed before. One of the pins had splayed (due to the small holes in the motherboard) and didn’t lock. Still planning to replace the grease as I lost most of it on my fingers. I’ll try to post some snaps of the stuff then.
You may want to refer to the wikipedia page on thermal grease to learn more on how to apply the stuff.
Mid-April 2007
Caught speeding in Chennai on the highway at 5 am. Sounds odd right. No traffic policeman would be active at night you’d think. Well, that’s cause it isn’t any normal highway – it was the internet highway. You can see a snap below.
This is much better than BSNL DataOne Unlimited – they only allow 8K/s upload bandwidth. The same night, my AirCard made a record upload speed of 14.4 KB/s. The average is what you see in the snapshot above.
Wondering why I call this speeding? Throttling happens in Chennai also. At times, speeds will be below 3 KB/s. But I don’t think download speeds are much affected. Browsing speed is good unlike in Puducherry. I hope AirTel doesn’t degrade this superb service in Chennai.
This article describes a problem faced when using the AirTel Prepaid Mobile Office monthly pack in Puducherry. The pack costs Rs. 375 per month but speeds are variable and very slow at times. What I know is that the speed change is not due to congestion. I suspect it is due to bandwidth throttling.
April 2007
6:50am: I wake up and think about checking mail. My favourite P2P client shows that speeds are good, around 10KB/s. But there is no guarantee with Mobile Office. Anytime, speeds can drop to 2-3KB/s.
I use a Class 12 GSM/EDGE data card for internet access on my laptop. It is the best GSM has to offer. At one time, I got 17KB/s (=142 Kbps) download and 10KB/s (80Kbps) upload which lasted for 7 days in December 2006. This is the capability of the card. You may want to check out a review on the Sierra Wireless AirCard 775 on my MSN Live Space.
So, hoping the good speeds will remain, I started checking mail.
6:59am: Speeds become an unbearable 2KB/s. I am unable to continue browsing. All browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera) show page not found.
7:25am: I quit my P2P application and am able to browse at very slow speeds.
What is interesting to note is that whatever speed change, it happens at the 59th minute. And it may happen at any hour, followed by good speeds after the same minute of the next hour (sometimes it may take more than an hour for speeds to return). Calling AirTel 121 is no use. They claim they offer speeds of 40Kbps (which works out to 40/8 = 5 KB/s).
Below in a snapshot of a graph from a P2P application showing the change in upload speeds. The change is abrupt and expected at particular times. This is different from the minor, often unnoticeable changes due to congestion.
2KB/s = 2 x 8 = 16 Kbps
3KB/s = 3 x 8 = 24 Kbps
The signal bars are 5 bars out of 5 at all times.
Is this (16-24 Kbps) the unlimited internet which AirTel has to offer? This is way below the minimum speed (40Kbps) they claim to offer and therefore is a problem with their service. We need better quality of service (QoS).
I hope someone can give more information about this problem. Both AirTel technicians and users of Mobile Office are welcome to discuss this issue.
