Binary Inspirations is a blog devoted to the latest and greatest tech items in the form of computers, gadgets, and hacks. Also featured are miscellaneous programs I've written, tips, informal hardware/software reviews, rants, tutorials, and more.
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Time for a new Z-Alarm release. Version 2.2 brings:
More information and download:
Z-Alarm 2 (version 2.2)
mktorrent-GUI is a Windows-based GUI frontend to the console-based (Linux/UNIX native) mktorrent tool. There don’t seem to be any decent standalone torrent file creators on Windows. There is MakeTorrent, but that was last updated in 2004 and doesn’t support more modern features like private flags. My frontend aims to address these shortcomings and expose all of the functionality of mktorrent to the user via an easy-to-use interface.
Of particular interest to hardcore torrenters is the batch mode feature. If a directory is specified as a source, mktorrent-GUI will scan one level deep for subdirectories and automatically create a torrent for each subdirectory. All of the usual features such as comments, piece size and the private flag can be set.
More information and download link:
mktorrent-GUI version 1.0
Air cooling is simple and inexpensive, and for this reason it is by far the dominant method of CPU cooling. However, they aren’t flexible; overclocking will often overwhelm the cooler’s ability to regulate temperature. This was precisely the problem I ran into with my desktop rig:
At stock clocks and voltage, the CPU would idle around 33-35 degrees C. Seems pretty normal, right? Whenever the CPU encountered a heavy load, temperatures would easily skyrocket past 61C, which is AMD’s specified thermal limit for this particular chip. I was forced to take it easy with demanding applications like video encoding and processing – overclocking, of course, was completely out of the question. The latter was especially unfortunate as my chip seems to need a bit more voltage for any decent overclocking to happen.
So I decided to something about it.
After quite a bit of research, I came across the Corsair H50. It’s known as a closed-loop liquid cooler. Water/liquid cooling obviously provides vastly improved performance over air cooling, but a decent full-fledged setup with a pump and radiator is much more complicated to set up, and also much more expensive. The risks of watercooling (fluid leakage, regular maintenance) are also something to consider. The Corsair H50 claims to provide the benefits of liquid cooling in a completely sealed, compact package.
Corsair claims that installation is easy, but it ended up taking longer for me (maybe it was just a result of my own clumsiness?) I ended up doing some steps out of order before everything came together.
The H50 comes with a “high-efficiency” 1700RPM 120mm fan for its radiator. The radiator allows you to attach an additional 120mm fan to it to create a push-pull setup, which I did by using my existing case fan.
The results? Nothing short of phenomenal. Check out these temperatures:
idle: 27-29C (2.6GHz @ stock 1.28V); 33-35C (3.0GHz @ 1.312V)
load (running Prime95): 45C (2.6GHz @ stock 1.28V); 54C (3.0GHz @ 1.312V)
Under a more realistic load, my temps don’t go above 47C.
If you need serious cooling without the hassle of a full-blown enthusiast setup, I wholeheartedly recommend the Corsair H50. You’ll be blown away by what it can do.
