The Official Cooling Thread!

Mike951,
The big problem in not knowing what the case looks like is we have no idea of how the air flows through it or how the case is vented. For instance I tailored the airflow on mine to the venting on the case. It would more than likely work as well for any similar design. Here's 2 views of my Cooler Master Cavalier case. The cooling is light years better than it was in the stock configuration!





I left the front 80mm intake fan as is, I installed a Silverstone 120mm FM-121 in the rear running at 1400RPM. I replaced the CPU air duct with a Silverstone 80mm FN-83 blowing out, at 1300 rpm. If you notice there is an air vent below where the CPU air duct usually is as well as air vents on the back of the case. Those fans working together draw more air than the front fan can provide making the side and rear vents pull more air in than you would normally get. This only works well with cases that have the same type of venting. That's why I'm not too fond of most window cases as most have no air vent on the clear cover, only a fan, usually blowing in. If I knew what your case looked like I would have a better idea of what you will need to do to better ventilate it!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

theone,

my CM mystique case is very similiar except it has a 120mm front fan (which I replaced with a 3 speed antec) and I don't have any fans on my side panel (although a 80mm fan will screw right on). it would most likely cool a little better with a 80mm side fan but I don't like wires hooked to the side panel and besides after the chipset mods I'm content with my temps.

 

What do you mean chipset mods?

 

I pulled the NB and SB heatsinks and reseated them with AS5. I then added a 40x40x20mm chipset fan to each of them. dropped my mobo temp close to 15 degrees C.

 

Mort81,

It all started out as an exercise to test the Silverstone FM-121 because I was looking for better airflow, which worked very well. My side fan that I put in it when I built the computer was old, but I loved the color, very dark blue, almost but not quite purple. It started squealing ever time you started the machine so I ordered an FN-83 to replace it. I hadn't noticed that there was only a flange on one side of the fan so I put it in anyway, but not blowing in like the old one, but blowing out. The temps dropped like a brick and my HSF slowed down quite a bit! I kept messing around with the speeds and discovered that with the rear at 1400 and the side at 1300, it ran damn near cold. The reason, of course was the improved airflow through the side and rear vents. It made such a difference and was so quiet I've left it that way.

I just sent Sam a 2 minute sound bite. The mike is so sensitive that you can hear the AC compressor cut off and you can hear me open my lighter and hear the sound the torch makes when I light it. The last minute is with the AC and ceiling fan shut off. You can clearly hear the Video card fan. It's amazingly quiet considering it has 7 fans running, and has improved since the fans were new. Running in the ball bearings, I guess. My HSF rarely goes over 1400 when I'm doing any work or encoding. I have it controlled by the bios under PWM control and it idles between 800-1000 rpm. I'm pretty happy with it!

Best Regards,
Russ :>)

 

Thanks for all the replys. My case is basically a white box with 1 set of holes on the back, I improvised in the back for fitting the 2nd fan in, there are no other holes, the box is modifiable though (i.e. don't care). I got a Thermaltake CL-P0114 120mm CPU Cooler, I tried it out by resting it in place and turning it on (mounting is gonna take a bit, I'll need to make a little room for things possibly. Anyway, I booted it up for a bit and got idle temps (55C.) even higher than my stock CPU HSF (didn't test at load) I am seriously considering taking it back. Should I do something else to make it work better? Is my generic Z9 Silicone Heat Sink Compound not enough? Please note that the case was open when I tested it, thanks for your help.

Edit:Turns out my CPU HSF is only doing 2 or 3 C. better than the thermaltake (its 90F.+ around here, thus the change in readings). But still, why didn't the thermaltake (Ran it for about 5-10 mins) test as better than the stock fan ?

 

Mike951,

If there isn't a place for a front case fan, I would strongly advise you not to try it with the cover on. The case has to have vent holes somewhere or it wouldn't be able to ventilate anything. I'm sure you will find some sort of mounting holes for a front fan. If not, you will need to remove the front cover and drill a bunch of 3/16" holes low on the case. When you are done drilling, put the front cover back on the case and you have some ventilation!

BTW, that's another reason I don't like sideways CPU coolers. Makes it harder to get the heat out of the case and any PCIe or PCI cards get hotter because the CPU cooler is blowing their way! If a CPU cooler doesn't fire to the rear, I don't want it!

Best Regards,
Russ

TO ALL,
Anyone having Tune up Utilities 2007! I discovered, by accident that Tune Up Utilities 2007 has a very good memory manager. I don't believe in software memory managers, but this one does some unique things. It will flush the caches for a windows session without having to re-boot. Windows normally keeps all of that in memory until windows is re-started. Makes things work with just a little more snap!

Russ :>)

 

I feel as though I haven't described the case exactly right, there are no holes on the front of the machine, however there are plenty of open spaces on the back (although only one proper space) as well as removable cd/floppy covers on the front of the case. On the sides there are 4 sets of 32 tiny slits (- - - -) which provide some, if only slight air intake. I'll try to get pictures of the box later. If anyone has any ideas on the thermaltake (refer to last post) feel free to speak up. Thanks.

 

If you don't care then make a hole in the front and put a fan(intake) there.

 

Yea, it appears I should get another fan for the front (don't care about front), I opened up the case and turned on the house a/c to 75 FH. (costs a bit thus the reason for around 90FH. in house)and now core temp is reporting around 33/36 C. at idle. I should probably still get something to lower the temp a little bit more (as well as front fan) but other than that my heat problems seem mostly to have been caused by the room temperature. I think I'll take the thermaltake back, get some better in/out ventilation for the cpu, install a front fan and possibly cool some of the hotter running compenents (ram, hardrives and chipset? seem to be running a little warm).

 

Yeah, I mean no matter how good your Air cooling is it will never go lower than the ambient temperature.

 

abuzar1,

Not true! Air conditioning can have a lot to do with that. Mine happens to be in the line of fire of the AC. I kick it on some mornings and the CPU is 20-21C and the room is 23-24C. The AC has removed all of it's heat. In the wintertime, when it's cold, it fires up at 18C and the CPU fan doesn't even come on for a few minutes!

Best Regards,
theone :>}

 

Alright Russ let me rephrase that, in a normal environment when you don't have your PC right up to an AC or next to you open fridge your temps will not be less than the ambient temps. lol

Best Regards(I'm a thief),
Abuzar.

 

It's been a while but I'll try and reply to at least some posts...

Theone@29/8-1842: I agree about ECS quality, all the people bar 1 who have had ECSboards have found them low quality items. Why is a perfect motherboard so hard to find these days? We get chipset heat, bios revision problems and goodness knows what else, even with the ones that get 5 star reviews!
I also agree on sticking with the 965 chipset, I wish I'd used it.

Mort@29/8,2227: Best post of the page.

Theone@30/8, 0104: Haven't had a chance to download that soundbite yet, when I can I will.

As for the ambient temperature, I sometimes had my case's temperature probe (when it worked) show 19C when the room felt at least 23-24C, and I didn't have A/C.. Perhaps it has something to do with stored air from overnight trapped in the case that can't warm up?
Just a guess...

 

Well I guess than the ambient temps in the case were lower right?

 

That's what the readings seemed to suggest...

 

Well yeah, what I was trying to get at was that normally temps should not NOT be lower than ambient temps and that the temps of the air inside your case had the ambient temps and not your room temps.

Sorry if I sound confusing.

 

not to argue but it's theoretically impossible to have lower pc temps than ambient air temp, unless you have a refrigerated case, phase change, or aditional refrigeration unit cooling the pc. if your pc temps are lower than ambient, then you obviously have inacurate sensors or monitoring software.

 

That was my other thought, which in fairness seems more reasonable.

 

That's what I've been trying to say all along. I'm bad at getting ideas across lol.