Cooling help for HP Elite system

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ChrisAttebery
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:38 am

Cooling help for HP Elite system

Post by ChrisAttebery » Thu Jan 13, 2011 2:54 pm

I bought an HP Elite i7 system last year. I have been pretty happy with it overall. At Christmas I installed an MSI GTX460 with the Cyclone cooler. The cooler exhausts internally and the card runs at about 75-80C under load at stock clocks. I can feel a stripe of heat along the side of the case where the card sits. If I remove the side of the case the card runs at about 65C.

Yes, the interior is pretty cluttered. I cleaned mine up by pushing all of the wiring above the HDD cage and zip tying it together when I installed the video card. Also notice that the CPU cooler doesn't have a fan of its own. There's a perforated area on the case side directly above the CPU cooler. It looks to me like it would let cooling air bypass the CPU cooler somewhat. The CPU never gets above 65C though.

I had a couple ideas to try and get better cooling to the GPU.
1. Block off the vent over the CPU so the case breathes from the front vents.
2. Cut out the grill over the case fan.
Either:
3a. Wall off the airflow from the front half of the case over the CPU cooler so it has to pass by the GPU before it hits the CPU cooler.
OR
3b. Make a duct on the case fan so that 1/2 of the air is pulled through the CPU cooler and the other half is pulled from the area below the GPU.

I got a couple suggestions off of Anandtech. One was to add a fan above the HD blowing towards the GPU. Another suggested cutting the side of the case above the GPU.

Here are a couple pictures of the case I stole from the manual:

Image

Image

Idea 3A Block added in Yellow
Image

Idea 3B Duct added in Yellow
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I'd appreciate any input you guys could give me.


Chris

Fire-Flare
Posts: 422
Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:44 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: Cooling help for HP Elite system

Post by Fire-Flare » Sat Jan 15, 2011 4:20 am

That whole case looks awful from a ventilation standpoint, I think your best start for silencing would be to transplant everything to a new one that allows for adequate cooling.

ChrisAttebery
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:38 am

Re: Cooling help for HP Elite system

Post by ChrisAttebery » Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:07 pm

I agree, but it's not worth it to me to transplant the system to a new case. Before I added the video card the system was cool and quiet enough.

I clipped out the grill on the case fan, swapped the fan for a Zalman Quiet Fan, blew out the dust bunnies out of the CPU cooler, covered over the vent above the CPU and then cut an opening aproximately 1.5" x 4" right over the GPU fan.

There was way too much clutter above the HDD cage to clear a path far a fan, so I gave up on that idea.

It is much quieter than with the case side off. The CPU is a few degrees cooler, about 40C at idle and 65C during gaming. The GPU is staying around 60C under load, which is 5C-10C cooler than when I ran it with the side off. There was just no way to get fresh air to the GPU before. Now I can feel the air pulling in though the two front vents in the side panel.

One last thing I did was to add two more Zalman fans to the desk (for a total of three) running off a 5V USB cable. They pull about 50CFM quietly though the desk so the PC isn't trying to cool with stagnant air.

bugmenot
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2008 3:55 am
Location: bugmenot

Re: Cooling help for HP Elite system

Post by bugmenot » Mon Jan 24, 2011 6:24 am

75-80 load temps are nothing to worry about for that gpu as you can see if you google some reviews. So game on.

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