So I just got my passport reissued this week and I’m amazed how far things have come. I got my passport done close to a decade back when I had to fly to Austin. Back then getting a passport done was a pain - I had applied from Mangalore in Tatkal and since Mangalore didn’t have a tatkal processing system, it was forwarded to the Bangalore passport centre. I still vividly remember the day I visited - I stood in queue at 8am (was told to go early because the counter was open only till 12pm), stood there for hours after some initial confusion on where to go(which lost me a whole bunch of spots) and when I was 2 spots away from reaching the counter, the guy at the counter shut down saying they’re doing for the day even though it was 11:45am. Was so pissed but really couldn’t do anything but go back. The next day I went and stood in the line at slightly before 7 and somehow got through the document submission and had to patiently wait.

Slight change for this post - going to post only instrumental songs. Enjoy 🎶🎼

It’s been about 4 years since I built Hellforge. It’s gotten some updates:

• Replaced Gigabyte 7750 with an Asus Strix 970
• Added on a Samsung Evo 840 256GB
• Memory upped to 16GB
• Replaced the Logitech K210 keyboard with a Corsair K70 Lux RGB
• Replaced the CM default case fans with Bitfenix Spectre

But the one thing that has remained constant: the CPU heat sink and cooler. My old house was dusty and no matter how much I cleaned, within a week or two there’d be quite a lot of dust. I did a  bit of superficial cleaning on the insides but never bothered cleaning the CPU heat sink/fan.

The hesitation comes mainly because I had a torrid time when installing the heat sink the first time and didn’t want to damage it. Off late the processor’s been running hot and the CPU fan’s been on overdrive pretty much all the time. Last week I was curious about the temperatures it was running at and HWMonitor - I wasn’t prepared for this.

That's not a good sign. pic.twitter.com/dOZL4BRnL9

— Sathyajith Bhat (@SathyaBhat) May 14, 2017

Basically the temperatures were close to Tj Max and I wonder how come the CPU wasn’t throttling. With temperatures at this level, I had to do something about this. And egged on with support of Alpha, I decided it’s time to clean it up.

Here’s what I bought to clean up:

• Compressed air can -  A blast of this can get a lot of dust off but you need to keep this straight, so difficult to use this for hard to reach surfaces
• Hand pump - really useful for the hard-to-reach surfaces which can’t be reached above
• Isopropyl Alcohol - You’re going to use this to wipe off the remaining gunk off the heat sink and the CPU.
• Some tissues/cotton swabs to clean up the gunk
• CoolerMaster MasterGel - I settled on this after extensive discussion with Alpha. He suggested to get the cheaper one, since the higher priced version is more suited for overclockers

Now, for the pictures. You’ve been warned. This was how it was when I opened the cabinet

Long time, no music.. slightly occupied with house shifting and new job - but more on that later. For now, enjoy the songs

Bringing you more good songs… hopefully you’ll like them. Also moving to a fortnightly schedule.

Another week of missed songs.. but I’m back.. again. Enjoy ♫♬

♫ My Top 5 Last.fm artists: spinnin' records (8), Armada Music (3), blink-182 (3), First Aid Kit (3) & Phillip Phillips (3) #music Powered by Tweekly.fm

♫ My Top 5 Last.fm artists: Pink Floyd (25), deadmau5 (5), The Proper Ornaments (4), Golden Fable (3) & Aerosmith (2) #music Powered by Tweekly.fm

♫ My Top 5 Last.fm artists: Daft Punk (6), Gorillaz (3), Barns Courtney (2), deadmau5 (2) & Ghost (2) #music Powered by Tweekly.fm

I missed last week’s post, but back this week. Enjoy ♫♬