Cooling my PC, one degree at a time

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totokan
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Cooling my PC, one degree at a time

Post by totokan » Sun Aug 13, 2006 5:37 pm

Ok, so I'm back from my extesive vacationing with more PC cooling problems. Currently, my rig consists of an 'X-Infinity' case (by Aspire) Filled with my previous rig. My Processor runs at 3.4 Ghz, with Hyper-threading and EM64T or something (i'm not using Prof. 64 Bit, just regular). I have a gfx card made by asus and it's an EN7900GTTOP, a glorified NVIDIA Geforce 7900. The whole case had been getting too hot (and still is). Currently, when Idle, the temp. of the case will keep rising into the low 90's (according to my temp. sensor.). An internal program that checks the temp of the gpu tells me it's only 115F, and it's cooled by a thermaltake Tide Water device, so it should be ok. My processor is cooled by a Zalman fan, some large heatsink with a fan in the middle. It's connected by Arctic 5, so it should be ok. Why is it getting so hot? There's 5 case fans, 1 120mm and 2 80mm normal ones and 2 80mm ones in a drive bay air remover.
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Post by atari2600a » Sun Aug 13, 2006 5:40 pm

Do you have thermal grease on the CPU? (probably too obvious a question...)
Last edited by atari2600a on Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by totokan » Sun Aug 13, 2006 5:43 pm

Yeah, that's what I meant by "it's connected by arctic 5". that's a thermal compound.
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Post by Indigno » Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:18 pm

Be sure that your case fans are blowing into the case. Also, be sure to have some places for the air to get out. If there are any IDE cables or anything that can be pushed to the side or out of the middle of the case and out of the way of the vents, do so. Another thing that may or may not lower the temperature is to get one of those HDD fans. I have no experience with them but If you've ever felt a hard drive while it's running you'll notice how hot it gets.

And if nothing works, take the side off of the case and let it site like that while running and test the temp. Then if it's still too hot, then bring up a room fan and blow it into the case. I've had to do that as a temp fix while waiting on a heat sink or similar cooling piece.
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Post by atari2600a » Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:21 pm

It's also good to have a fan(s) blowing out of the case; I've heard it helps a lot, but I've never had a temperature problem bad enough to try...

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Post by bicostp » Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:44 pm

Usually you want airflow to go from side to back, or front to back.

ie have a fan in the back of the case blowing out and the side/front fans blowing in. It won't do any good to have the intake and exhaust next to each other.

I only have the fan on the processor, a case fan, and the power supply fan and the air coming out the back of the PC is never excessively hot. Then again my processor is a 3 gig P4 with an Ultra fan/heatsink combo. The case fan came from rack mount equipment and is hacked up with a molex power connector. It's sort of loud but I'm working on modifying the fan blades to lessen the noise.

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Post by totokan » Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:27 pm

Well, the back one and side ones are all set up to be irreversible, so they always blow the same way. Looking at this, I think I need the back one to blow out, because it looks like it isn't. Thanks, I would've never checked that.
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Post by Metroid fan » Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:33 pm

Well my pc is right over a air conditioning vent which keeps it at a low low 45 degrees which is good enough for me 8)

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Post by vskid » Sun Aug 13, 2006 8:37 pm

I have no clue what temp. my pc is running at, but I can turn it off and open it and the processor heatsink is only slightly warm (because my computer is slow!) and the only case fan is the psu fan, and that air is only slighty warm, too..
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Post by Krepticor » Sun Aug 13, 2006 9:36 pm

you could have a wind tunnels that blow cool air from the outside and to the cpu and the GPU and then have an outside fan blowing air out

IE take small diameter airconditioning hose (or septic tank hose from a camper) and then have that exiting onto the fans of the CPU and the GPU and then just have fans blowing out of the case, for this o work really well, the case needs to be sealed pretty well
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Post by totokan » Mon Aug 14, 2006 7:05 am

Err, maybe one reason the temps haven't lowered since the installation of this 'tide water' device is because it's so large that I can't reach the short fan-cable to the mobo connecter. Therefore, the back fan is currently unusable until I get some sort of converter for it to use the PSU's cable.
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