Is air cooling insufficient?

Control: management of fans, temp/rpm monitoring via soft/hardware

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Reverate
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:36 pm
Location: Australia

Is air cooling insufficient?

Post by Reverate » Sun Jan 16, 2005 3:03 pm

I live in Brisbane, Australia where we have quite warm summers, last night the ambient air temperature was about 29°C with about 70% humidity <insert sweating emotion here> :shock: . I just want to what i can do to cool my PC... with air cooling it is impossible to go below ambient, but how close can you get?

I have the following setup

P4 Prescott 2.8
Zalman 7000-Cu
P4P800 MB <round IDE cables>
2x512Mb Kingmax ram <no Ram sinks>
seagate 80Gb Hdd <P-ATA>
seagate 40Gb Hdd <P-ATA>
PCI-TV tuner Card
ASUS 9800XT <Comes Stock with 2 onboard fans>
DVD-RW Drive
CD-RD Drive

I have external heat probes displaying current temperatures... last night at 10pm the motherboard was approximatly 48°C, and the CPU was at 63°C. During game play the motherboard temps reach about 50°C while my CPU gets to 73°C :shock: , and remans stable there...

My Case is quite small with 4 case fans, i have an intake in the front, onto the HDD's, an exhaust above the vid card/below the CPU, the side panel is off with 2 high-flow server fans blowing directly onto the CPU and video card.

I do need a new case but id like to know what sort of hack jobs i can do to cool it down <quietly if possible, currently i can rival most lawnmowers for noise>... What temperatures should i be able to achieve? Is watercooling my only option? Phase change?

Tyrdium
Posts: 272
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2004 7:29 am
Location: Boston, MA
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Post by Tyrdium » Sun Jan 16, 2005 3:09 pm

For starters, get a VGA Silencer Rev. 3 on that 9800XT. It'll help a lot with the noise, and exhaust the hot air from the card right out of the case (helps with temps across the board).

Tiamat
Posts: 84
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2004 12:27 pm
Location: Washington DC

Post by Tiamat » Sun Jan 16, 2005 3:55 pm

I know prescott jokes are old, but there is no denying it, that prescott is a good source of your heat. As the above mentioned, Modifying your gpu with an Artic Silencer is an excellent idea. You might see temp drops of 5-10C depending on the case setup.

I assume your case has all 80mm fans. Are your intake fans dust filtered? If not, you want to be cleaning out the dust from all of your hardware as often as your environment causes you to - 1x a week if you live in a dust heaven, and 1x a month if you are good about vacuuming.

More on the 80mm fans - Although Panaflo L1A move not much air, it has always been enough air flow for my cases.

Try removing one of the front bezel plates, does that help any?

I find that negative air pressure within the case cools my system better. That is another thing to consider.

In the end, i believe that the arctic cooling ATI Silencer 3 would give you the biggest benefit.

Reverate
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:36 pm
Location: Australia

Post by Reverate » Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:04 pm

I had a bit of a look at a Silencer, the ATI silencer 3 seems to be the one to get though
VGA silencer Rev 3
Compatible With:
Boards based on ATI 9500-9800 (Pro, AIW, XT, SE) except 9800 XT
Boards based on NVidia Geforce 3 TI
Thanks Tyrdium, I hadn't thought about that, it is definatly on the cards now...

Tyrdium
Posts: 272
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Location: Boston, MA
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Post by Tyrdium » Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:11 pm

Heh, no problem. It's actually decently quiet, even on High mode.

Reverate
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:36 pm
Location: Australia

Post by Reverate » Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:19 pm

Tiamat,
5-10°C would be a great improvement... Ill have to give it a go

As for negative pressure... That means having more exhaust than intakes right? Ill try that also...

I dont have any dust filters on my intakes :oops: and the zalman seems a bit dusty...

has there been any issues with the intake blowing directly over the HDD's, instantly warming the air?

Tyrdium
Posts: 272
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Location: Boston, MA
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Post by Tyrdium » Sun Jan 16, 2005 4:42 pm

I'd keep the intake fan blowing over the hard drives. They could get pretty hot if it isn't...

Reverate
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Joined: Thu Jan 13, 2005 8:36 pm
Location: Australia

Post by Reverate » Sun Jan 16, 2005 6:19 pm

Tyrdium:
I'd keep the intake fan blowing over the hard drives. They could get pretty hot if it isn't...
Will do...

cansan
Posts: 127
Joined: Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:33 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Is air cooling insufficient?

Post by cansan » Sun Jan 16, 2005 6:33 pm

Reverate wrote: ...my CPU gets to 73°C :shock: , and remans stable there...
Isn't that about the temperature at which P4's start throttling?

Also motherboard at 48C? This seems a bit high to me, maybe some other presscott owners can comment on this? If it is indeed high for a presscott it can mean that the case temp is high, maybe tweaking your airflow maybe ducting or such can help.
Reverate wrote:has there been any issues with the intake blowing directly over the HDD's, instantly warming the air?


As far as I know harddisks dissipate <10W of heat, so in my opinion should not really be a problem.

Good luck getting your presscott cool and quiet.

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