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My NSK 2400 is running a little warm, looking for ideas

Posted: Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:17 pm
by thegoldenstrand
Hi,

After reading the various post here and elsewhere, I went out and bought a Zalman 9500 and the Antec NSK 2400. Well, first off, the Zalman was too tall for this case by about 3/16th of an inch.. oops.. a post I read here or on anandtech seemed to indicate that the Zalman would be a good choice for this case.. oh well, I am using the amd stock 4 heatpipe cooler with 80mm fan for now and might go out and get the cpu Mike used in his review of this case. I did replace one of the two exhaust fans.. those antec fans really get loud at medium and above. Case is lightly loaded with on board video, i GB of Kingston ram, two hard drives and one cd drive.

Maybe its the MSI K8NGM2 way it measures temps, but.. with case closed and looking at hardware monitor at idle, my case rises from regular internet browing with cpu and system temps around 38-39 to show about 44-45C CPU temp and 41 System temps.. if I open the top of case, cpu temp drops to mid 30's.

I tried a blower to get more cool air to come in by exhausting hot air near power supply in last pci slot, but that only helped system temp 1-2 C and increased sound level at least 10 dba. One benefit of the blower is my hard drives are no longer hot to the touch, but just warm.

so.. any ideas? It seems to me the cpu is cool air starved.

Mike

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:37 pm
by sea2stars
A little warm? Those temps sound fine to me. What CPU are you running? I only have two fans total in my NSK2400, running an E6400, 2 HDs, a 7600GS and a NVIDIA DualTV tuner, and the temps on a hot day here get up to about 50C at load; less in the winter. I think the max recommended temp for a Conroe is 60C; the absolute max is 80C which is probably highly unrecommended. Silence is always a trade off between acceptable levels of heat and Db.

Um.. yes the Zalman 9500 will fit after you carefully modify and "part" the fins; stated in one of the longer threads. I myself am using an odd setup that fits my case and motherboard very well.

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:17 pm
by ciz28
How does the inside of the case look? Are there clean paths for air to flow around? Maybe you could post some pictures. You might consider switching the side case fans to be intakes instead of exhausts and see what happens to your temps.

The case is pretty clear

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 10:18 pm
by thegoldenstrand
I am curious how a si 128 fits.. fans must be right near the roof of case.

My case is pretty clear near cpu area. Having two hard drives and with some cabling routed under dvd drive to that socket near hard drives might be blocking some air intake, other than that.. ??

I currently have a Corsair 520 in the case, way more power than I need and.. just temporary.. I used psu that came with case in a build for a friend's girlfriend.. I did not like how it performed for any heavy use. 11.77-11.85 on 12V at virtually NO load did not look like a keeper to me.

The Cables on the Corsair are a little short for this case imo. I am rethinking how i arrange the cables, currently main 24 and 4 pin power come straight in throught that hole by the psu, and are too short to route under dvd drives and then in.

so.. I am open to psu suggestions that might work better because the psu cables alone could be blocking some air flow.

I have two ide drives that further block air flow, one a dvd player and one of the hard drives.

I might give that blowing air in a chance.. kind of strange having most heat from the case exhausted out the side, even with open vent near cpu.. thinking once air gets to it.. pretty warm.

I might change out the cpu cooler as well, but.. first the air flow.. not sure where the measurements are done for cpu temp and system temps but never really had going into bios cause system and cpu temps to jump like they do in this case before.

Since cpu cools so much better with top off case.. anyone put a hole on top of case cover over cpu for downward blowing cpu coolers?

I am going to read up on things more.. if anyone has a link to maybe a better set up with this case for air flow, please share and.. with 4 pin on motherboard on far side near 120 mm exhaust fans, or about as far away from psu as it could be.. anyone know of more appropriate psu?

Mike

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 11:08 am
by ciz28
You can check out the link in my signature if you want to see how I did the cabling in my case. I routed the 24 pin cable under the optical drives, through the HDD chamber, then finally into the main chamber to the motherboard. I routed the 4 pin cable straight into the main chamber under the motherboard to keep it out of the way. This was all with the stock 380W PSU.

Regarding the SI-128, I am running it semi passively, because a fan would have almost no clearance (1-3mm). I think it would work very well if you were to cut a 120mm hole into the top of the case to get air in directly, but my CPU runs cool enough with the current setup that this wasn't necessary.

Finally had a chance to read up...

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 12:01 pm
by thegoldenstrand
Yep, I saw your rig, great cabling.. I read up on how you have the air blowing in and how the SI-128 with fan will just barely fit although a little lopsided.. etc.. First things first.. I am going to tear it apart and re cable and try your idea of blowing the air in..

Other concerns are that hard drives, I have two of them were running pretty warm with air blowing out, hope they don't run too hot with air blowing in. Also considering adding video card, GeForce 7900 GT with maybe Zalman 900, heard it might barely fit..

How on earth did you get CNPS 9500 to fit on your initial build?, when I tried, top of case hit no matter what I did and it seemed to really need another 3-5 mm to fit comfortably.

Will report back in an hour or two.

Posted: Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:42 pm
by ciz28
I had to bend several of the top fins down to get it to fit in the case. Ultimately I wasn't terribly happy with it, so it ended up being kind of a waste :(

Fans blowing in at 6V, CPU 44, System 30 noise?

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 11:13 am
by thegoldenstrand
Progress, so much so I added a heat producing video card and these are temps at idle watching on board bios h/w monitor for fifteen minutes when temps equalized.

Still want to bring the cpu temps down.

Much of heat for cpu is coming over from video card, due to cpu coolers downward blowing fan sucking hot air over to it even with fans blowing in. Video card is a e-GeForce 7900 GT OC fitted with Zalman 900 at 6V.

So..

Options?

I am thinking of adding a pci slot blower, but.. I tried an Antec and it was way to freaking loud,.. at least doubled or tripled subjective noise level when I added it.

Anyone know of a good quiet case blower?

I am currently using 4 Zalman fan controllers to clutter the heck out of my cable management to get desired noise, so looking for other ideas on how to get these fans undervolted as well. I see some resistor cables at Quiet PC USA for both 5 and 7 Volt 3 pin fans and 7V 4 pin power supply resistor cables at Directron. What is best way to go on this?

Also.. looking into new Zalman CNPS 8700. Looks like a CNPS 9700 type of copper is used to make it lighter.

if only Zalman had quiet fans, I am getting tired of having to undervolt everything.

I was appalled at how loud even the nexus 120mm is to my sensitive little ears at 12V in this case, while acceptable in others at 9-12V, I cannot tolerate this fan at more than 7V and 5V would be preferable in the Antec NSK 2400, even with washers added to reduce vibrational noise and yes they do reduce it improving noise quality a lot in this case.

Onward. Ideas?

Mike

Fans blowing in work ok with stock cooler and mineba fan

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 5:50 pm
by thegoldenstrand
Done testing for now.

I replaced the stock AMD 80mm fan with a Scythe Mineba and now in bios under h/w monitoring I am getting decent temps on most recent try. Most recent specs:

Corsair 520W psu
2 Globalwin 120 mm fans blowing air in at 6-7V(more airflow and same noise as Nexus in this case from what I have tested thus far at below 7V. Also have the Zalman CNPS 900 on e-GeForce 7900 GT.

CPU 38
System 31

My second to last try was to have air pulled up through cpu cooler, which did not do nearly as good of a job with temps of:

CPU 46
System 30

Prior to these efforts CPU was topping out anywhere from 43-48 at idle in MSI motherboard bios and sytem temps with air blowing out were a good 10C higher when fans oriented to blow air out.

I am thinking if I do this again.. better get a Zalman CNPS 8700, 7700, 7000, or better low lying fan, otherwise imo.. too much heat to deal with for most cpu coolers due to getting hot air from video card.

Blowing air in appears to have done the trick for the cpu and sytem temps and cooling, but the video card and back of the case is still pretty toasty.

So I am going to try a couple undervolted blowers to see which, if any offer an effective, quiet way to lower temps further, especially for video card.

Mike

Re: Fans blowing in work ok with stock cooler and mineba fan

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 6:34 pm
by ciz28
thegoldenstrand wrote:CPU 38
System 31

...

Blowing air in appears to have done the trick for the cpu and sytem temps and cooling, but the video card and back of the case is still pretty toasty.
Your temperatures look really good now. What would you say made a greater difference, reversing the side fans or cleaning up the wiring?

To address your video card, you might look into isolating it by sectioning off the main chamber with some cardboard. I'm just running a lowly passive GeForce 7300 LE, so I don't have nearly the heat output to deal with that you do.

Air in + Scythe Minema.. and of course blowing down, not up.

Posted: Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:04 pm
by thegoldenstrand
I did not try Scythe Minema with case fans blowing air out. The stock AMD fan did not do well in that config at all. Actually was getting close to getting a new cpu cooler, etc.. when gave it one more try..

I think your idea of blowing air in deserves the bulk of the credit.

I am kind of surprised at how much better the Mineba did than the stock amd fan at same noise level or quieter in regards to blowing air downward towards motherboard. I am glad I got it a long time ago now. :D

It would be nice if AMD used better heatsinks and fans, if Antec would improve the fans they used in their cases, etc.. lots of cheap crap out there being sold in package deals with really no benefit to the customer.

Mike