My Antec Phantom 350 died

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 4:15 pm

I brought it on April 16, 2005. It died on June 2, 2007. I received a replacement PSU today. I presume that Antec thinks that my Phantom 350 died as a result of heat, as they sent me an Antec Phantom 500, which has a fan. My PC has the following specifications:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Processor (XP-90 Heatsink with 92mm Panaflo fan undervolted to 5 volts)
2GB of Corsair ValueSelect Memory
XFX GeForce 7950 GT (fanless)
Western Digital 320GB (WD3200JD) Hard Drive (suspended)
Asus P5W DH Deluxe Motherboard
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio Sound Card
eVGA NVTV Dual TV Tuner
Samsung CD-RW/DVD-ROM (SM-352B) optical drive (set to low speed setting)
Antec P150 Case
120mm Antec Tri-Cool case fan (set to low and isolated with EAR grommets)

I am a bit worried about possible noise from the fan if I install it. Does anyone think that I will have a problem?

Edit: It seems that Antec discontinued the Phantom 350, which I would think is because too many of them were dying. Anyway, I have decided to install the Antec Phantom 500 into my PC. I just hope that it does not shear the screws after I install it.

Moogles · Post by **Moogles** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:52 pm

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of temperatures do you get with your 7950GT and a passive PSU? I'm using a Silentmaxx (Fortron Zen rebadged) PSU and an XFX 7950GT and it currently idles at 68c... in a TJ08 with ample airflow. Since I'm not playing any games currently it's not really an issue, but when I start gaming again I'm sure it will be.

From the looks of it you have 2 5v fans (and possibly some intake fans) that are cooling your CPU/GPU/PSU? Doesn't it get way too hot?

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:18 pm

I just installed the PSU. My PC still does not work, so I am assuming that the motherboard died at some point in time.

Anyway, I do not remember what the temperatures were, but they were all fairly good, with the exception of the northbridge, which stayed at 55 degrees Celsius constantly because of some plastic Asus put over its heatsink. It was the hotest thing in the PC. I do not believe any other temperatures, barring the GPU temperature, exceeded it.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:40 pm

The Phantom 350 was discontinued a couple of years ago. The Phantom 500 is the same design with a fan added (quite literally, as a bolt-on to the back of the supply). The fan on the P500 won't come on unless the top heat sink goes above 51C, which shouldn't happen if there's any air flow at all across it.

The P5W DH north and south bridge heat sinks come with goofy covers that should always be removed. The TIM on those heat sinks should also be replaced with something decent. In addition, the "Hyper Path 3" feature (which overclocks the north bridge) should always be disabled.

EsaT · Post by **EsaT** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:15 am

Shining Arcanine wrote:with the exception of the northbridge, which stayed at 55 degrees Celsius constantly because of some plastic Asus put over its heatsink.

IIRC temperature reported as motherboard/chipset temperature is temperature of southbridge.
That's still many components for very low airflow, especially with sabotaged (by BS department) chipset cooling of motherboard.

But first I would suggest making sure replacement PSU works. (without fan it might be hard to know is it running)
There's LED in motherboard's lower right corner which shows is motherboard getting standby power.

cmthomson wrote:The TIM on those heat sinks should also be replaced with something decent. In addition, the "Hyper Path 3" feature (which overclocks the north bridge) should always be disabled.

Now I'm not so sure it was TIM, looked more like (horrible thick layer of) some cement/putty.

But Hyper Path 3 shouldn't cause problems, do you think Asus would have put it on as default if it caused problems?
It just tightens internal latencies of northbridge which is the reason why overclocking guides recommend disabling it.

cmthomson · Post by **cmthomson** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 4:10 pm

EsaT wrote: But Hyper Path 3 shouldn't cause problems, do you think Asus would have put it on as default if it caused problems?
It just tightens internal latencies of northbridge which is the reason why overclocking guides recommend disabling it.

HP3 is okay only if you don't overclock at all, and if your motherboard cooling provides good airflow through the north bridge heat sink (such as with the stock Intel CPU cooler).