Lets Cool It!

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I recently decided that my quad based system was running far too hot for my liking. Originally it was housed in an Akasa Zen case which had front and rear 120mm fans. Then I decided to obtain an Antec P183 which has two 120mm fans top and rear. I also added a 120mm fan in the HD bay. Took about two hours or so to move the hardware from the Akasa case to the Antec.

I had been running a file conversion (.mkv to H264) so I used that as the comparative benchmark as it was running the four cores at up to 100%. The results are below, Akasa temps first, then the Antec temps, all in Centigrade:

C: (150GB WD Raptor) 43;34
D: (Data drive WD 500Gb) 41;34
E: (Video work drive WD 1Tb) 44;34
CPU: 56;38
CPU Core #1 64;50
CPU Core #2 63;50
CPU Core #3 57;44
CPU Core#4 59;42
MoBo 43;41

Speaks for itself!

[Steve Grisetti]

Is it noisier, John?

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

No Steve. In fact quite the reverse. It is very much quieter. One can still hear the fans but it is a whisper by comparison.

[Steve Grisetti]

Very sweet!

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I can't believe it myself!

[Chuck Engels]

The RAM on my Dell Precision was getting really hot, 2 of the 4 sticks.
I changed out the RAM and everything cooled down to a reasonable range.
One of the things that clued me into a problem was the fan noise and the fans running constantly.
There is still a lot of fan noise however, sure would like to reduce that.
There are 4 fans in the case already and seem to be well positioned to cool the CPU, RAM and Hard Drives.

[tiny]

I see a lot of worrying over cpu temps, and from my reading, it seems a little overblown. Unless your computer is shutting down, or your CPU is self throttling due to heat, then I wouldn't worry about temps.

That being said, those temps are impressive. My Q6600 averages mid 40's in idle, but under load can still hit 60's. I'm not going to worry about that number until the day it is nearing 80 under load.

The advantage I see to lower numbers, is it means you can push the system further when overclocking, if you're into that. Otherwise, aside from that, I would say the biggest problem with hot CPU's is ambient room temp climbing due to a hot box. So now that we are heading into winter, maybe I should overclock my pc again.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

.....I would say the biggest problem with hot CPU's is ambient room temp.....

That was one of the problems here, with room temps around 30+C during the day. So I'm happy now that my temps are lower and maybe now I'll start thinking about overclocking.

Just to update my original post, here are the temps when there is no load on the system:

C: (150GB WD Raptor) 32
D: (Data drive WD 500Gb) 33
E: (Video work drive WD 1Tb) 33
CPU: 30
CPU Core #1 38
CPU Core #2 39
CPU Core #3 36
CPU Core#4 36
MoBo 38

Ambient temp in the house is 25C.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

And a final word. The ambient air temperature here in my 'office' (read guest bedroom) has now cooled from 30-32C to a more refreshing 22C or so but I had noticed that my CPU temps were not reducing from their new low temps. My thinking was that the lower ambient temp should have an effect.

The Antec case has front mounted air filters and on checking them I noticed that they were starting to look a little bit grey rather than the original black. On closer inspection the dust was obvious. A quick removal/blow/replace and the CPU temp is now comfortably below 30C even under moderate load.

[Ron Hunter]

Lower temperatures should translate to longer life for the integrated circuits, but since PCs are replaced every few years, you may not notice that type of benefit. Ambient temperature reduction is certainly a plus.