The Official Cooling Thread!

I'll be honest with you guys, despite owning one, I still think there are far better cases than the 900, and those drive cages are pretty much the reason why. After removing the graphics card from my server I've got it nearly silent, so it's doable with that case, but nonetheless, I think the P182 is about the only Antec case really worth buying at the moment.

 

sammorris,

I much prefer the room in the one I've got compared to the P182, especially since mine's close to 3" shorter! No reversible Door! The P182 is $30 more expensive, even when it's on sale! When it's not I can buy 2 Cavaliers for less than 1 P182! I'll pass!

Best regards,
theone :<)

 

Hmm, each to their own, but the P182 is made for some seriously quiet computing...

 

sammorris,

At the expense of heat! The ventilation unless you have a 2 slot video card is terrible! They get quiet like that when there's no air inlet vents in the cover or back! LOL!! Way too much money for a case that offers little besides quiet!

Best Regards,
theone {:{)

 

Hmm, I'm not quite convinced about that. My friend's P182-based server runs a Scythe Ninja heatsink on his CPU (a powerful, but entirely fanless heatsink, that relies on ambient airflow to effectively cool a CPU). He's removed all but one of the case fans for additional silence, and his CPU has idle temps of around 31C. No case that offers airflow in the 'poor' category could achieve those temps.
Nonetheless I concede that the P182 is one of the worst cooled cases in its price bracket.
I still personally think NZXT cases are under-rated for silent cooling. Like most other cases the stock fans aren't exactly great, but the cases are designed well enough that low airflow fans can still cool a system well.
Has anybody here tried the NZXT Zero?

 

sammorris,

Throw a hot single port Vid card or two in it and watch those temps climb as the heat is partly drawn through the CPU cooler. I could never use one on the right side of my desk, thanks to the non-reversible full length door that opens right to left. I'm happy with what I got! Works well just the way it is! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Nonetheless I can't help but consider a PC that puts out a fair amount of heat (yours doesn't fit into that category, let's be honest) is still going to be victim to less than perfect temps inside your case. Nowhere near as bad as some, agreed, but the 7600GT only puts out half as much heat as my X1900XT, which puts out slightly less than an 8800GT, let alone two of them like some people use.

 

sammorris,

You forget, I've already had some hot stuff in the same case! That was the home of the D-940 before I put it back in the window case. The X800GTO ran decidedly warm, and the D-940 was no E6750!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Either way, the X800GTO does not produce anywhere near as much heat as the current top end GPUs, and even the extreme heat of an OC'ed D940 would only put the balance back to the amount of heat a PC like mine generates. There are many builds that put out far more heat than that.

 

yo, guys i was wondering, why when Overclocking why can't you turn the multiplier to the max and the clock speed? what is stopping it to do that? is it the heat or something else

 

Do you mean why we don't we turn up the FSB to the boards max? Well there are many reasons for not doing that. First of all it wouldn't work, the RAM or the CPU wont be able to stand that high. Also many people would not like the voltage required to go to the max REALISTIC overclock. Also the heat does come into play. I have taken my E6750 to 4ghz, but I am not comfortable with how much I have to turn up the voltage and the heat it would produce as I am still on stock cooling.

 

oh thn why the CPU's FSB can go so high and it doesn't work.

so it's still the heat and voltage problem...

 

GTR35,

Most CPUs have locked multipliers. Most can be lowered but can't be raised above it's particular preset limit. My E6750 has a locked multiplier of 8x. I can lower it to 7 or 6x, but I can't raise it above 8x. In theory, the higher the multiplier, the lower the FSB can to be to achieve a particular CPU speed. The reason I say "Theory" is because all of this is dependent on so many different variables like the quality of the motherboard and how well it regulates the voltages, memory, Power Supply and as you mentioned, Heat!

With the GO stepping, at least on the Exx50 series, heat is pretty much a non-issue. They are so thermally efficient that they just don't create much heat to begin with. The problem with this is that overvolting the CPU voltage can cause Electro-Migration, which is fatal to the CPU. Think of the electronic paths inside a CPU as being like tiny water pipes. Too much pressure and they spring a leak! The electrons will break through into different paths. Once that happens it can't be repaired and the CPU is toast! A very expensive lesson, to say the least!

Hope this helps you better understand the way things work.

Best Regards,
theone :<)

 

No GTR it's not a heat problem. The thing is that the CPU can't withstand a high FSB without a voltage increase, and when you increase the voltage high enough it will cause electro migration(see theonejrs' post above).

Also even with voltage increases there is only so much speed a CPU can handle.

 

ooo, ok i understand now, thnx guys

 

the best way to gain performance is to balance your fsb, cpu multi and ram speeds with the trade of in heat it produces.

mine will run fune @ 3.4ghz on a x9 but because its on 1520 fsb it lessens my mem bandwidth which has a hit on performance as it starves the cpu of info slightly. so it runs 24/7 with 1600 fsb on a x8 multi, although its only 3.2ghz the mem bandwidth is higher so the performance drop is only slight even tho its 200mhz slower. it also runs about 4c cooler on the cores as it needs less volts to do it.

 

Well I am a total noob when it comes to Liquid Cooling. I want to know what to use to cool the system below. I have not overclocked before and do not want to until my system is properly cooled. It has 1 120mm intake fan and 2 120mm exhaust fans, the fan block on my cpu and the fans in the power supply. My system temp is about 45C and CPU is 50C (i dont know the temps at load) So i want a system that is not overly large but will effectively cool my cpu, both gfx card (and hdd, ram, chipset if recommended).

 

You don't need water cooling. All you need is a decent case with good ventilation(it seems you have that), and a good air cooler on the GFX card and CPU.

 

a good after market cpu heatsink and maybe another intake fan for you case should do the job well.

tuniq tower 120, thermalright ultra 120, i have read some good things about the zerotherm nv120 or you could get a cheapo freezer 7 pro like me

i would try to add another intake fan tho as negative preasure can cause issues by pulling air in thru places you dont want it to really, and you want to control the air flow thru your case so its coming in as close to the hotter parts as pos, so one over your xfired cards would be ideal.

 

Indeed, unless you know what you're doing I'd recommend the air cooling route. It's simpler, cheaper, and often gives results surprisingly close to that of the lower-end watercooling setups.