Building Spanky 43

On May 30th, Spanky developed a sound that could only be one thing: cables bumping into fan blades. Opening the case, the problem was easily found and solved. One of the rear exhaust fan power links was running up against the CPU exhaust fan. The fans were turning so slowly that no harm was done. The cable was rerouted and the case was buttoned back up. Spanky ran quiet as a clawless mouse after that. In the image above, we see the massive Noctua NH-U12S CPU cooler with two NF-F12PWM fans in a push/pull configuration. This cooler has kept the CPU below 40C since Spanky was powered up for the first time. Benchmarks should reveal just how well this unit works since it can easily dissipate the 84 watts of heat the Xeon makes under full load. The cooler can radiate more than 200 watts safely.

Some would say it is overkill on this machine. It enables the Xeon to enter and remain in turbo boost mode on all four cores for extended periods without overheating, resulting in rapid project operations involving large files and applications. The cooler is quite large since the fans are 120mm wide. The heat sink never gets warm to the touch during idle. Under load, it gets mildly warm but never so hot as to cause warm air to exhaust out the rear of the case. The air flow is excellent and the case has plenty of external clearance. The machine sits behind its monitor, hidden from view. Since there is no bragging window, there is not much to see. Spanky is short, fat and black. He is incredibly quiet. He is also extremely powerful, looking for some hard work to do...