Rayzoon Technologies LLC

[GregHolmes]

This is a heads-up for those of you using laptops for performance.

I use a Toshiba Satellite P30 (3.2GHz, 512B RAM, WinXP Home sp2), and lately it's been shutting off VERY suddenly during moderate processing loads. No warning - just lost work. This never happened when the laptop was on the keyboard stand, but almost always while it was on the desk. Parts of the case have been almost too hot to touch.

Obviously a problem with overheating.

So I did some research and found out that it was simply a build-up of dust on the heat sink. This is a problem with many of the Toshiba models, which draw air from below with no filter. The sudden shut-down is a safety feature. Since mine required the entire bottom cover to be removed to get at the heatsink, I decided instead to simply blow air into the "outlet". Lots of dust came out through the fans. (About a years' worth of dust...)

Even this simple solution has worked wonders! The laptop runs cooler, and the fan even slows back down when the processor load reduces. It seems like a new machine again.

The overheating was causing the processor to slow down (in an effort to reduce heat), which caused the Plogue Bidule dsp percentage to hit over 100%, causing dropouts, etc. The exact same layouts with Jamstix used to work fine, around 30% dsp. In fact, everything about the computer was slower, even simply listing files. Effectively, my computer was acting like a less capable machine. It was so bad that I was even looking for ways to remove some of the background processes, in an attempt to speed things up, and I was going to buy more RAM. Come on - 3.2GHz is not fast enough?

So, if you start to get the strange feeling that things are running slower, check for dust in your processor's heat sink.
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Dealer for AccuGroove, Acoustic Image, BassLab, Eminence, Muse Receptor, MIDIjet, Rayzoon, and more...
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[drummix]

Same thing applies to desktops too, cpu temperature had raised by 10 ° C !

After using my vacuum cleaner for both cpu and case fans, cpu temperature is the same than when I have installed my Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu ventirad : 38° C idle (P4 HT 3 GHz) .

[drummix]

to see what's actually going on, you can try this liitle software from Panopsys : http://www.panopsys.com/downloads/ThrottleWatch.zip