Great

Allright, I have done this before on a number of other systems, however I am working on an older system with what I suspect is an aftermarket cooler on a tray processor. The system is an old amd athlon 64 based on an msi motherboard.

The usual large black retaining mount for the heatsink and fan on the back were removed as was the fan itself, the crossbar with locking lever and fan were as well. My problem is that the heat sink itself is secured by another crossbar across it that is secured by jewelry screws to something, the front mount for the fan blocks access to those screws, and while loose doesn't move enough to give access nor does there appear anyway to do much else with it, outside those screws.

I am putting an athlon 64 x2 into the motherboard because I had one lying around and thought I'd upgrade my home data server a bit. Now I'm frustrated because I can't figure this one out. Any ideas?

In theory there is a small chance that the cross heat sink peice is just secured to the heat sink and nothing else , and that the resistance is just old thermal compound that has become cement. I don't want to force it and risk breaking the socket underneath though. Under the whole asembly I can see the edges of the cpu socket that should have its own locking bar for the cpu itself on it, I have zero access to that however. Any suggestions? I'm fairly sure this isn't the stock heat sink though it is fairly similiar to it, but have removed and replaced cpus from athlon 64 x2 and they didn't have this second cross peice and screw system.

I just turned 30 and am 6'3" tall. I weigh 195 lbs (88.5 KG) Untill about 4 years ago I was very physically active and was eating 7,000 or more calories per day I brushed it off because I was very active, and still fairly young. I am currently much more sedentary, and am still eating 3500 to 4000 Kilocalories per day. I am in as far as I can tell fairly good health and I consume the recommended amounts in servings of fruits and vegetables though I also consume more dairy meats and starches than is recommended. Since I am almost double the recommended intake for an adult male should there be anything I should have checked out by a physician?

I am building a budget game box for a friend, allready have everything else hardware wise priced and figured out but am considering getting a pair of the 6570s with a gig of ddr3 over a single 6770 with a gig of Gddr5 since the price is within $15. He mainly will be running WoW (which either will easily handle with his main processor and ram) but may want to try Skyrim and some other newer games. I am pretty sure either will be able to handle at least basic settings for the newest games but was wondering which one will top out better with better frame rates. This is partially just opinion hunting as well. (I can also over clock either graphics set-up a bit as he will have the cooling for it)

It seems that most of the posts in this section are asked in such a fashion as to achieve a very biased answer if they are not out right attempts at flaming and trolling, is there any reason for this?

Also why is it that for some reason people tend to use various political terms as epithets and generally improperly or out of context.

Also Liberal, Socialist, Democrat, and Communist aren't synonyms those terms have different meanings and being a member of on group doesn't mean you share beliefs or membership in another. The same is true of Republican, Conservative, and fascist. Why do people seem to want to combine these? Also your political party membership has little to do with your native intelligence and far more to do with your moral beliefs, what you feel will be best for your country, and your social position in life or dedicated self interest, whats the reason for attacking something you can't possibly know about another poster based on their views?

I recently purchased a new net-book computer for myself at a local computer retailer, for the first time in about 7 years, as I wanted a net-book instead of building my own system and couldn't find readily available sources of parts anywhere. Last time I bought a retail computer they tried to pass me on a restore disk instead of actually giving me copies of my software so they could have numerous addendum software added in so I explicitly asked the sales person if my drivers and OS disks would be included and he assured me they would be i asked if they would be on bootable optical media or on a usb flash drive as the net-book has no integral optical or removable media magnetic drives and he said "it would make sense for it to be on a usb drive" I get home open up the net-book and find out that there is no included software but directions for downloading the software from the internet and making my own disk at the web site so I promptly call the retailer, (with whom I have a generally good relationship from buying numerous parts there in the past to build my own systems) and am informed that if I really have a problem I need to come in to see their tech support department. When I arrive approximately 35 minutes from the time on my receipt I am informed that no net-book includes OS disks and only a few come with recovery disks. So I ask to trade in my new net-book for a similarly valued and slightly better outfitted laptop with an optical drive.

Only to open it on the spot and find that it only has a recovery disk as well. I am then told by their tech support department that almost no brands of laptops have drivers disks anymore just recovery disks. I then get the different makers of both computers on the phone to be informed that apparently they no longer include OS disks and drivers disks with their systems. Only recovery disks.

I need to know how to get an authorized OEM copy of windows 7 for my new net-book from the manufacturer, and how to get drivers disks from them as their recovery disk seems to only want to install a modified build of windows that includes features I don't want or need and a fair amount of bloat ware.