Craig Ramsay Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 My PC is still running too hot so I am going to change the case and fans to hopefully solve the problem. Problem is I have no clue what is good/bad/noisy/quiet Does anyone have any idea what sort of setup I should go for? Its a dual athlon 2000+ Cheers Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 What do you mean by setup? The more fans the louder it is. The faster a fan is the louder it is. Get a big case which is easier to cool down - things aren't cramped like sardines... Have links or options you have that we can help you pick from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted July 2, 2003 Author Share Posted July 2, 2003 Really what I need is for the machine to run at reasonable temps but it needs to be quiet too. I have had a look at some thermaltake CPU fans but I heard they are noisy. My machine already sounds like a hairdryer orangeno The big case sounds like a good idea... I will look into that. Any idea how many case fans I should be using and which CPU fans to be looking at? Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcnair Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Hi Craig, we went for the aluminium coolermaster cases and they are smashing. We're running the 3G Barton at 40.5 degrees and inside case at 22. http://www.coolermaster.com/case/products/atc201.html It has dual input fans at the front with one exit fan on top and one exit fan at the rear. Very quiet too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted July 2, 2003 Author Share Posted July 2, 2003 Oh yeah I remember seeing Iains machine... looks very cool. Is the case quite quiet? Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcnair Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Surprisingly quiet, yes. I have one in my lounge at home and its hardly noticeable. Nip down to the office and check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 I think that the best on the market are the Chiftec cases which are also being used by Enermax. Here they are HERE Most of the time they would include all case fans already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted July 2, 2003 Author Share Posted July 2, 2003 Cheers guys thats a great help Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andymcnair Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Craig, can you let us know which options you go for and what difference it makes to your temperatures / performance? Just out of interest whats your machine running at just now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted July 2, 2003 Author Share Posted July 2, 2003 I think I will get the game case as you with two Coolermaster Aero 7+ CPU fans and a Globalwin Super Silent 22dBA power supply to keep things nice and quiet Idle temps at the moment are: CPU's - 57 degrees celsius Chassis - 35 degrees celsius The other day when rendering my CPU's were 70/71 degrees celsius too hot! Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 My fav cooler at the moment is still the Thermalright SLK800 with an adjustable rpm 80mm enermax. And/or another low rpm 80mm fan. They fit almost all boards, they're extremely efficent (still one of the best performing heatsinks on the market) and because of the 80mm fans, quite quiet. They'll run a 2700+/2800+ XP in the low 40C's idle. For P4's I'd look into the new Zalman 7000-cu for quiet performance cooling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 Greg, I posted about my heat issues a while back and bought the recommended SLK800 and a Panaflo 80mm fan. My idle temps on my Athlon 1900+ is 58-60c. This is with the Artic Silver III compound (I followed the instructions to the dot) and also I added a 80mm Panalfo to the back exhaust port of my case. The case I have is an Enlight 7327 which came with a 80mm fan up front/bottom. Now, the only other thing I can think of that is contributing to this over average temp. is the two 40GB Western Digital ATA100 hard drives running right on top of each other in the 3.5" bay drive holder (one zip drive above both drives - but it's negligable). I have a CD-R ROM in the 2nd from bottom 5" inch bay. My power supply is a 300w. I'm outta clues as how to bring my temp down. As of right now, my front case cover and the left side panel are off so the case is pretty much running wide open. I had a friend, from university with the same case, suggest replacing the 80mm fan up front with a 120mm (with a bit of dremel work) but I would really rather not get into cutting / drilling if I can avoid it. Perhaps another case is the answer? Thanks much, Xavier [ July 02, 2003, 11:58 PM: Message edited by: xgarcia ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted July 2, 2003 Share Posted July 2, 2003 I forgot to mention that I have the CPU heatsink fan blowing onto the heatsink - I believe this is the way to do it right? Xavier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Your idle temps are 58C??? With a slk800? Check the bios to make sure your not accidently overvolting your cpu. Whats the ambient temp in the room? Make sure to blow out the heatsink with some compressed air. It looks like its full of dust from the photo. (Make sure system is OFF). Normally if your running at such high idle temps, I'd pull off the heatsink, clean the bottom off, clean the top of the cpu off, and remount the two of them with a fresh (remember not to glob on the as3 too much) coat of as3. www.articsilver.com for installation instructions. I'm running 1900+ MP's with 32 CFM fan's on AX7's and their in low 50's under heavy load. (So the slk800 should be at least 10C lower then what you have AT LEAST) (Ambient temp is around 22-25C) And yes the fan should be blowing down on the heatsink. Maybe you need a bit more fan umf. Try one of your case fans instead of the panflo L1A. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Yes - I will have to try remounting the heatsink. One thing I forgot to mention is that my 1900 chip was retail and (forgive me) I installed the heatsink/fan that shipped with the chip. That nasty thermal glue melted all over my chip...I'll take a picture later when I pull off the SLK800. I tried to scrap off most of it before I installed the AS3 and SLK800. I will swap fans and blow the heatsink for dust (it's not much - only been in there 1-2 months). I'm not sure about the ambient room temp. but ASUS Probe reports the motherboard idle temps at 80-82F. But if it makes any difference, the SLK800 dropped my temps down almost 20F (before the SLK800 I was hanging and crashing at 80F running Lightscape and MAX renderings). Thanks, Xavier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Knourek Posted July 3, 2003 Share Posted July 3, 2003 Xavier, As Greg mentioned you should cross check the temps with your bios as the bios will show a more accurate reading of the cpu temp. Also your drives shouldn't make any real impact on the temps with the case open like that and you mite want to try closing up the case and use a good intake fan in the front and a good fan in the back for exhaust (the panaflows are great). I'm running a case similar in size with 3x 80gig WD hard drives and 2x 80gig Maxtor hard drives, cdrom, Ti4600, SCSI, Matrox Millennium II, and a Thermalright AX-7 (predecessor to the SLK-800)on a AMD XP2700+ and the cpu temp at idle is only 40C with the room temp around 25C. And of course this is all in a cooler master case with panaflow fans throughout and is actually quite quiet for running 4 80mm case fans One more thing Xavier, the stamped fan grills in the case will help to restrict air flow and create noise. Take a pair of tin snips and cut them out and replace with the wire type grills commonly found on power supplies and that will make a dramatic decrease in noise generated by the fans while increasing air flow. Just a thought, -dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fermi Bertran Posted July 4, 2003 Share Posted July 4, 2003 Hi Xavi, My Dual 2000+ says it's running CPU1 at 66ºC and CPU2 at 60ºC idle, loaded 1 hits close to 80, and 2 stays around 70 ... This is after upgrading heatsinks and 80 mm Fans (Cooler master I think), I'll only say that with deffault in a box AMD coolers was worse The Box is a BIG cheap Iron some 65 cm tall tower with lot of room all the fans that create the wished airflow and power supply is an Enermax 550W... I really wonder if TyanSystemMonitor or the mobo sensors (mobo is a Tyan Tiger MPX) are actually working properly or they read wrong. System is 10 months old, at first I was very worried, I posted here on the subject, but now i am not, system has always worked sweetly, no lockups, I make it render heavily, we've had a very hot June in Barcelona (hotest of the last 100 years), July looks like going to be hot too, if processors decide to go Bonzo, then I'll upgrade and celebrate. Do what is reasonable to do, after that: Don't worry be happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 Well, Had a great weekend. Slept and ate alot. Got to spend time with my wife and two kids. I also got a chance to pull out all my hardware components and use compressed air to clean them out. WOW!! I could not believe how much dust builds up after just a few months. My video card was filthy. I also reseated my SLK800 with a fresh coat of Artic Silver 3. Also I repositioned and zip-tied all my power cables and neatly tucked my IDE cables to the side. My idle temp now is 49-51C and under load goes to 56-58 (With my side and front panels off the idle temp runs around 46-47C) - about a 10C improvement so I am happy. Moral of the story: Keep your hardware dust free for best performance. Thanks everyone. Now go clean your computers. Xavier [ July 07, 2003, 09:28 AM: Message edited by: xgarcia ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Knourek Posted July 7, 2003 Share Posted July 7, 2003 Heh glad to hear your temps are down, I usually find it surprising how much cleaning the inside of a case is overlooked. On average I blow the cases out once a month and vaccume out the filters. -dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 Its amazing what a little dusting/reseating can do. I've got three systems at work, all identically internally..but the temps vary almost 8C between them. The lowest temp system is running at a whopping 33C IDLE. Lowest temp I've ever seen on a tbred. (2700+ XP). While the hottest system is in the low 40C's idle. All due to variability in the mounting/chips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xgarcia Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Greg, Just out of curiosty, what cases are you using (or recommend for that matter) in the Entomology Dept. you admin? Or better yet - what case would you recommend for 3D-at-home guy like myself. I saw your review of the Coolermaster ATC-110 - but it seems a little pricey for me. Like I said before - I using an Enlight 7327, which is what I see at my univ. computer lab, but the air flow seems weak at best. Thanks a bunch, Xavier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Knourek Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Hey xgarcia, I thought I'd jump in on this one and Im sure that Greg will agree with me when I say that if your looking for an inexpensive case with good design, airflow and cost effective then have a look at the Chenming cases ( http://www.chenming.com/cases.htm ) the steel ones are good but heavy but the aluminum ones are great (I have both here) and there are a couple other manufacturers making the same case design and some are cheeper than others so you should shop around, Im in Canada and not sure where the best prices are in the US but Greg or someone here should be able to tell you. On the other hand I recently got a Coolermaster ATC-201B-SX2 case (thanks Greg ) it was a little pricy but sooooo worth the money due to the extreem quality of the case. Theres actually a photo of it in the General forum under the workstation thread. Just my $.02 -dave Edit- Also Heres a link from where I got my Coolermaster case and they were the cheepest for what I was loking for in a case... http://www.sundialmicro.com/cgi-bin/sundial/atc201bsx2.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 David's right on the money. I use chemming/chieftech/antec cases for all the departments machines. For the labs I usually go with mid towers like these... They're extremely easy to work with (sliding 5.25 bays, removable 3.5 bays, fan clips, easy open) and go for around 50-70 dollars, depending on whether you want a nice antec psu or not. For the professors (individual machines) since their mounted on the floor, I tend to go with the larger towers... The steel ones of these (like Dave said) are HELLA HEAVY. The alumnium ones are much nicer to move around . (The full towers go for around 60-100 depending on options) Both of these designs have front mounted USB/firewire ports (if the board supports them), and a joy to work with. Once you experience these type of case design, you get frustrated dealing with anything else . Coolermaster is the elite of computer cases. ELITE. You really pay a price premium for them. But daaaamn. They're so damn nice looking, very thick alumnium (very study) and have a very nice finish. Its akin to buying an audi over a VW. Both are fantastic vehicles, (even by the same company) but the audi definitely has the better fit/finish. Expect to pay 100-200 USD more for the same type of case buying from coolermaster then other companies. My personal cases are a Coolermaster ATC-110, A boxxtech 3Dboxx S5i, and a Shuttle SS51B Small Form Factor. And ya, I'm the admin. I'll take some updated lab photos today. I'd take individual photos, but its over 100+ computers...and I think the professors would give me an evil eye. Many companies use the same internals as the cases mentioned here. Alienware's new (beveled super cases) are just these cases with a nice exterior shell. Coolermaster even uses the internals of this case design on one of their own. Between the two...I'd have to say Antec is probably the highest quality with chieftech being the lowest. The nice thing about going antec though, is you get a top quality namebrand psu with your purchase. In some cases even a truepower...which I seriously recommend if your looking for new psu's. 3 YEAR warranty on the psu. Some companies don't even have a 30 day warranty. [ July 11, 2003, 05:06 AM: Message edited by: Greg Hess ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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