Hello all,
I finally had a chance to complete all of the Home Server upgrades - mainly, putting 3 more drives in, bringing it to a total of 2 TB, adding an LE-1640 Orleans processor - 2.6Ghz, 1MB of cache vs. 1.8Ghz, 256k of cache and finally upgrading to a Corsair 2GB RAM module.
I thought I would post a couple of comments on the process and some key points to note.
1. Follow Donavon West's directions - they are spot on with everything and very thorough:
http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2007/12/upgrade-memory-in-your-hp-ex470.html
http://www.homeserverhacks.com/2008/03/add-performance-to-your-hp-ex470-with.html
2. Arctic Silver is a must(or something close - I had to use Antec's Formula 5 which is as close as I could get locally - I usually use Arctic Silver)
3. As Donavon also mentions, alcohol is needed - I also used vodka, Absolut in this case. I should submit a photo to Aboslut - Absolut Gigahertz. :)
I was blown away by how badly the HP stock processor was installed - the OEM thermal paste on the processor was literally OVER flowing. It took awhile to ensure it was all cleaned off of the heat sink. I recommend using paper towels and alcohol or something disposal first, then using micro-fiber with some more alcohol to finish the job. The micro fiber ensures that you don't get any lint on the heat sink - that will act as an insulator and kill the heat transfer between the CPU and heat sink. It can't be overstated that it is important to get all the stock thermal paste off - it will hinder the silver grease applied in the last step of your new processor install.
In case you are curious about heat numbers and more data, here are some screen shots taken about 45 minutes after my install - I have a slightly different version of CPU-Z running which more thoroughly identifies the processor. All seems well so far and the performance is MUCH better:
From the Hardware Status on Home Server Settings:
I am very pleased with these numbers - I always thoroughly rub the silver paste into the heat sink and then put just very small drop of it in the center of the processor - works well.
Next, here is the CPU-Z output:
I am definitely pleased with the results and the temperature/performance is better than I expected.
If anything changes, I will update the blog. I was mainly interested in upping performance because I have 4 systems backup to the server each night through the client and another system that runs my Sharepoint dev environment that also gets backed up to it, so it needs to be stable and fast.
Until next time.
- Dave