Giga Upgrade

[Anthony Kulesa]

Got my Gigadesigns upgrade and spent 3 (!) hours last evening 
installing it. Lots of little connectors and screws to keep track of. 
It doesn't come with any instructions, so I downloaded the Powerlogix 
video and Sonnet PDF from cubeowner.com. Worked quite well, except 
those sources of info had instructions for installing a fan and 
replacing the thermal transfer plate, neither of which are required for 
the Giga card. Anyway, it is an involved process, but nothing a careful 
person can't do. I set mine at 1 Ghz (it comes configured to 1.2 Ghz), 
but will probabably go up to 1.2 soon since it can be changed easily 
without taking anything apart.

The instructions made no mention of thermal paste so I didn't put any 
between the thermal transfer plate and the Cube's heatsink. I'm now 
wondering if I should have. Anyone know if it makes that much 
difference?

I have the stock ATI video card and a upgraded 120 gig Seagate drive. I 
can't imagine the 120 Seagate generates much more heat than a stock 20 
gig Maxtor, so I should be able to go fanless to 1.2 Ghz.

One thing I did notice is that the app Thermoindock no longer launches. 
I realize it's not super accurate, but it was useful to get an idea of 
relative temperatures. Gotta find a new way to monitor temps now.

Any YES, everything is faster. When rebooting, the little blue bar gets 
about halfway across the screen, then BOOM, the desktop appears!