Nitrogon NT06-Lite not cooling CPU effectively

biased · Post by **biased** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:45 am

Hello,
I had a previous post in a thread in this forum (viewtopic.php?t=43226) and was informed by a user that a fan is not neccessary for the Nitrogon NT-06-Lite in the Silverstone Sugo Evolution cases which it is recommended for. So I went ahead and purchased it along with an additional FN81 and silverstone fx 121 crossflow fan. All the parts were silverstone so I figured there would be no issues of something not fitting which there wasn't but the problem I ran into was that the CPU temperature got to 65-75 degrees celsius and seemed to be rising without stopping, this was the temperature after running the computer for 30 minutes while watching in the PC health bios screen, I of course promptly shutdown this and added in the rest of case fans and put the cover on, set the SYS FAN controller to CPU which allowed the speed to be control and set it at 100% hoping that the enclosure with the fans would provide enough cooling to lower the temperature and keep it stable. But it did nothing, however the system temperature reading was 36 degrees at the time of the 65 - 75 degree temperatures and I can feel it being fairly cool in the case except for the heatsink which is extremely hot. It might be noteworthy that I had the two front bay drives open which contained all the extra power connectors, etc. and my i/o ports in the back do not have the tray or whatever it is to cover up the holes in between all the different ports. Another thing to emphasize is that I can feel it being fairly hot, I'm not very familiar with the new Heatsinks such as this one so this might be normal and I'm just not familiar with it but it sure seemed atypical. Also there is no room to put a fan ontop of the heatsink so that's out of the question. It is approx a few cms away from powersupply that covers up about half of the heatsink. The nitrogen cooler is faced with the pipes to the i/o ports and the top portion faced to where my optical drives would be (i can't do it the other way b/c of the crossfan cooler).

Here is some information from PC Health at the time of all fans being installed and the case being closed (as described above):
62 celsius CPU
36 celsius SYSTEM
45 celsius PWM (have no idea what this means)
SYS FAN SPEED: 3125 - 3200 rpm
AUX 1 FAN SPEED: 2100 rpm
AUX 2 FAN SPEED: 1875 - 1975 rpm

Voltage Core: 1.36
Voltage DDR: 1.84
CPU VTT: 1.27
Chipset Core: 1.26
ATX +12v: 12.11 (or 12.14)
ATX +3.3v: 3.23

So the cooling setup is as follows:
2x FN81 taking air out of the case at the top
1x FN81 cooling the hdds
1x Silverstone FX 121 providing a cross-flow across the case directly above the i/o ports

Case: Silverstone SG01
PSU: Antec Earthwatts 430w
Mobo: ABIT AN-M2
CPU: Athlon 64 3500 Socket AM2
CPU Cooler: Nitrogon NT06-Lite w/ the supplied thermal grease

Please help.

protellect · Post by **protellect** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:55 am

That does sound very hot for the CPU.

1. Have you installed the cool and quiet drivers? Check the bios options as well. You can get the CnQ drivers from amd.com in the processor section.

2. Are you positive the fans are moving in the correct direction(s)? Double check, I've made this mistake before.

3. Reapply the thermal paste. The stock stuff SUCKS! Be very careful when removing the heatsink, it often is "stuck" to the CPU. I ended up pulling the chip out of the CLOSED AM2 socket, but managed not to do any damage.

4. How good are the case fans? Do they feel like they are moving some air out of the case?

5. Consider adding a fan to move air through that heat sink of yours.

biased · Post by **biased** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:06 am

the caseflow fan should be doing the task of moving the air through the heatsink, it's fairly loud which can be adjusted but i set it at it's maximum in hope to lower the temperature.

I'm pretty sure of the direction of the fans, I can feel them pushing out the air at the top.

The case fans are all silverstone fn81 and from the reviews I've read they accomplish their task well perhaps not perfect and are fairly quiet.

also there is absolutely no room for another fan unless i somehow superglued it on but even then it doesn't look good, the case is literally packed.

even silverstones stock stuff sucks? I've got another thermal paste, a generic arctic silver cÃ©ramique. you recommend using that over the stock?

protellect · Post by **protellect** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:51 am

Usually the thermal paste is on too thick, or the heat sink isn't mounted correctly.

biased · Post by **biased** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 9:55 am

hmm pretty sure the thermal paste isn't on too much. i used a lint free cloth (coffee filter) put a tab on and rubbed it in until it was somewhat "absorbed" and there was a thin layer of thermal paste and I checked if there were any gaps between the copper base/plate and cpu and there are none. it looks just like the manual says.

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:06 am

1. Have you installed the cool and quiet drivers? Check the bios options as well.

sitting in BIOS causes 100% CPU usage,that's why it heated up so much.

biased · Post by **biased** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:15 am

jaganath wrote:
1. Have you installed the cool and quiet drivers? Check the bios options as well.
sitting in BIOS causes 100% CPU usage,that's why it heated up so much.

so you are saying, there might be no problem at all?

i guess to be safe i should install some sort of temperature watch for windows?

and yes amd cool 'n quiet drivers are installed and enabled

biased · Post by **biased** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:01 pm

alright that fixed it thanks, i checked temps w/ speedfan and cpucore and it showed it being normal.

protellect · Post by **protellect** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:33 am

nice