Case Temperature Is P***ing Me Off!

[emissary]

Hiya Everyone,

 

I am having some problems with the airflow in my case.

 

I have a Chieftec Scorpio case adn now that I finally have some decent components, I am ready to overclock. The main thing is that my cpu is running at 49C idle, yet when I take the side panel off my case the temp drops to 44C/43C. Now I have cleared up the cables as best I can, I use rounded ide/floppy cables and my power connector cables are all nicely tuck away or wrapped together so they dont look like the contents of a bowl of spaghetti.

 

I have 4 80mm case fans, 2 sucking in air at the front, 2 blowing it out at the back.

 

The Radeon 9800 pro is sitting about 7-8 cm below the vantec aeroflow cooler.

 

I really don't know what to do now as I have done all I can to improve my airflow that I know of.

 

The cpu was installed with a paper thin layer of arctic silver 3 on the entire vcore and then the vantec on top. Could there be anything wrong with this?

 

I have heard that it is good to apply/take off/re-apply arctic silver 3 to improve temps, but the thought of doing this is starting to tire me as it means taking apart my whole pc again, however, if it must be done then so be it.

 

I am hoping to up my fsb to 200 and leave my multi at 11 to get my barton 2500 to run at 3200 speeds. I am fairly confident this can be done with the vantec, but certainly not with the case side panle on at the temps i am currently getting.

 

Can anyone give me some advice on what to do now, short of water cooling for my cpu.

 

Thanx 4 your time,

 

emissary.

 

[ccokeman]

More air through the case and maybe a blow hole. Fans on your side panel will help with video card cooling. Whats room temp?

[Dignan]

There is no way to have no change in the case temp with the side panel off/on but those temps are quite high. I have had some trouble with the HSF shifting on the AS 3 when I am putting it on, when I pulled it off and re-applied it w/o all the shifting the temps dropped 5 degrees. AS compounds are really picky and if they aren't applied right you could have some issues.

[AYoKoNA]

first off just go to arctic silver's website to find out exactly how much you put (about the size of tiny grain of rice uncooked.)

secondly i had the same problem as you when i got my case. the intake fans were not enough because i had small holes barely filtering it. I opted to cut a 120mm hole on my side acrylic.

My temps dropped dramatically (about 9 degrees, I also have a mid-tower.)

B4 my modding, changing of case fans (i.e. 1 80mm tornado fan, 1 120mm YSTECH fan, and 1 92mm delta for my heatsink, ALL VERY LOUDEST FANS MONEY CAN BUY), sp-94 and ceramique, cleaning of wires....

ambient and system temps were at 50-53c on load.

Now the ambient temps go up 35c on load max. Cpu load at 38-39c

This is all without a/c on hot days in Los angeles.Temps would be much lower with a/c

MAKE SURE YOUR FANS HAVE ENOUGH CFM to FORCE the HOT AIR out of the case!!

 

Heres a cpl of links to all the work i did

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.p...&hl=my+new+toys

http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.p...opic=11511&st=0

Edited October 29, 2003 by AYoKoNA

[IUMaestro]

Sorry to here about your high temps em : /

 

my #1 recommendation is to, like AYoKoNA said, check the Arctic Silver website and make sure you are appying this stuff right. I too use AS3 and it can be very shifty, some applications go well, some suck. It's a matter of actually getting good at applying AS3 to be honest.

 

Also you could look into a copper shim. You can get them very very cheap. I'm not sure if they help with temps directly, but i DO know that they help your heatsink fit evenly on top of the vcore.

 

It might seem stupid, but ya never know, maybe it will be a breakthrough. Best of luck with all of this.

[AYoKoNA]

not my experiences with copper shims, however from what i heard from other ppl in this forum and others is they INCREASE temps.

[tazwegion]

the intake fans were not enough because i had small holes barely filtering it. I opted to cut a 120mm hole on my side acrylic.

AYoKoNA has raised a good point here... the inlets on the front you refer to are no more than some slits in the facia panel allowing for barely any airflow...

 

 

Hi CFM fans are great but noisy... running them on lower voltage will reduce noise but unfortunately also CFM, additionally heat gets trapped at the top of the case (as heat rises) as a result many people have opted to create top-of-the-case blowholes, to vent this heat...

 

 

But the suggestion of a side panel mounted 120mm, would be a great place to start...

Edited October 29, 2003 by tazwegion

[ccokeman]

not my experiences with copper shims, however from what i heard from other ppl in this forum and others is they INCREASE temps.

Stay away from the shims. It increased my temps by 7c with just that 1 change.Reapplied as3 3 times thinking i might have messed up.

[emissary]

OK, my case temp with side off is now 38C, thats after about 3 hours when U opened my bedroom window.

 

So I think the heat may also be my room temps, I guess it is hotter in my room than most of u lot out there (dont read too much into that... )

 

But seriously I am also thinking of reapplying my as3 paste. As I mentioned earlier, I have put a paper tin layer on, but I am sure I also read on these forums that you only need to put a small amount directly in the middle of the vcore and not worry about putting any on the outside surrounding it, hence just leave it silver.

 

Is this right? Do any of u guys put it on this way?

 

Lastly but not leastly, I do believe that my vantec aeroflow may not be up to the task of aircooling when I try to max out my bart 2500 to 3200 speeds. I tried earlier, but prime95 would not run and quake 3 would not boot period. I also encountered some problems when booting, the screen kept going in a loop back to boot up but not past the winxp screen. Raising the vcore temp to 7.5C chnaged this though and it boot to windows.

 

Coul it also be that I just have a bad case? I though chieftec scorpios were ok, am I losing too much in not having aluminium?

 

emissary

Edited October 30, 2003 by emissary

[robbie]

You can check out what I did to drop my temps here

Rob

[ClayMeow]

Stay away from the shims. It increased my temps by 7c with just that 1 change.Reapplied as3 3 times thinking i might have messed up.

I have a shim on my main comp, and my temps are great. I haven't tried running the same comp without the shim though, so i guess i couldn't technically say whether it affected it, but I don't see how my temps could be 9C lower.

 

Anyways, all the suggestions have been great, esp putting a side intake fan, but if you can't mod your case or don't want to, here's what i was thinking. It seems you may be drawing too much air out of the case. Like was said, the two fans sucking air in are inhibited and thus whatever CFMs are listed for them, it's less. The two exhaust fans in the back, however, aren't inhibited (or at least shouldn't be), and thus those CFMs are probably accurate. Regardless, even if the front fans weren't inhibited, those 4 fans hypothetically cancel each other out (as far as air flow goes). However, you ALSO have a PSU which acts as a major exhaust (esp. if you have dual- or tri- fan). Thus, you're pulling much more air out of the case than you are bringing in. Try disabling one of the back two fans and seeing what effect that has on your temps. It would hopefully keep a little more cool air in the case a little longer. As i mentioned in another thread, you may also want to try purchasing the Zerus TwinTurbo drivebay Fan (i think that's what it's called). I got one from tigerdirect for another computer i built because it had minimal fan spots. Put it in the lowest external 5.25" bay you have, or somewhere that'll allow the air to flow into the case over the mobo. It brings in 70something CFMs i believe, and is around $20 i think.

 

Hope that helps some. GL