[Cube] Kernel panics, etc...

[Riba]

On Jan 27, 2006, at 19:35, Rob In der Maur wrote:

> Riba, et. al.
>
> I think your suggestion does make a lot of sense. I do have an  
> NVidia 2MX as graphics card. I still can feel that the fan from the  
> CPU upgrade doing its work, but you might we right about the fan of  
> the graphics card.
> Is there any way to verify that this indeed the problem without  
> dismantling my Cube (e.g. is there some software that can run a  
> test on the graphics card and figure out whether something is wrong  
> with it)? And if something is wrong, how hard is it to get a  
> replacement?

This is a toguh one. Nvidia 2MX does not have an active cooler (fan).  
The Cube specific version came with a huge passive heatsink, but the  
regular versions had a much smaller one but they usually worked just  
fine in a Cube. However some people reported their cards overheating.
You may try to open up your Cube (just remove the core) and check if  
the card is properly seated in its slot. Unfortunately there is no  
positive test that the graphic card is overheating because it will  
function fine until it overheats. The best test is to try with a  
different card. They can be pretty hard to come by these days, but  
you might find an ATI Rage 128 which should be fairly cheap and be  
useful for the testing purposes.
Personally I believe that the best option is Radeon 7500 if you can  
find one. They were not available in the cube, but some Quicksilver  
desktops were sold with them, they fit nicely once you remove the  
metal bracket.
You can try to remove the heatsink on the 2MX (it's a toughie since  
it is glued to the chip) and put a better cooler on.