AMD getting warm. Bigger case will solve this?

[rui]

Hi:

First the facts about my system:

I have an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1,4 Ghz), which is overclocked to 1,55 Ghz (a little over 1800+) (10,5*148). Core voltage is at 1,825.
My board is an MSI K7T Turbo2 (VIA KT133A), with 256 MB RAM Cas2. I have a 300W PSU.
For cooling the cpu I have an Alpha PAL 8045, with a Papst 8412 NGM fan (1900 rpm, 34 CFM, according to the manufacturer). The fan is mounted so the air is pulled out of the heatsink, not pushed.
My main gold here is silence. That’s why I don’t have any faster spinning fan on top of my cpu.
My case is a little on the small side. Just for an example, my PSU is mounted directly above my cpu. I don’t have any fans extracting air from my case, apart from the fan that is mounted in the PSU.

Now, I am getting consistently these temps: on full charge (like encoding a movie to xvid, or doing the Prime95 torture test) my cpu warms till 55º Celsius, which I think is a bit warmer than I like it to be. The case temp gets up to 24º C, and the PSU temp gets up to 26ºC.

Now, I came to you guys because I wish to know if, from your experience, I can lower this temps to, lets say 50º or less, just by switching my case for a larger one.
I know that I would achieve my gold just by mounting a faster fan on my PAL but my main gold is silence, so will the larger case suffice?

Thanks in advance for all your help

[da franksta]

1)a bigger case will certainly help, i don't know if temp will go under 50 though. a bigger aluminium case will help even more.
2)at full mount, 55 is high but shouldn't be a problem. over 65 could lead to instability, over 70 could lead to damage
3)as you mentioned, silence is your goal. nevertheless i feel the need to mention a dual fan psu will help a lot!

if your system is running stable and your satisfied with you setup, i wouldn't change a thing. 55 is not a big deal. i know there will be people saying they've got there cpu running at 40, but who cares? cpu-s are not made to last 20 years, mate. you know this, otherwise you wouldn't OC.

cheers

[rui]

Originally posted by da franksta
1)a bigger case will certainly help, i don't know if temp will go under 50 though. a bigger aluminium case will help even more.
2)at full mount, 55 is high but shouldn't be a problem. over 65 could lead to instability, over 70 could lead to damage
3)as you mentioned, silence is your goal. nevertheless i feel the need to mention a dual fan psu will help a lot!

if your system is running stable and your satisfied with you setup, i wouldn't change a thing. 55 is not a big deal. i know there will be people saying they've got there cpu running at 40, but who cares? cpu-s are not made to last 20 years, mate. you know this, otherwise you wouldn't OC.

cheers

da franksta, thanks for your reply, i apreciate it. :)

Your idea of the dual fan psu seems nice, but here in Portugal it's a pain to get access to not so common hardware, like dual fan psu's :(

I agree with your "if it's stable, don't mess with it" sentence, but we are in March. When we get close to the summer, I am afraid that i could have trouble.
I will look for cases prices, and if not too expensive might try one. If not, then i will stick with what i have, and hope for the best. ;)
Thanks again

[da franksta]

my guess is, it's the same everywhere. any non-standard component you have to order over the internet. nevertheless in my opinion this is the best way to build a truely great machine.
my personal experience with enermax psu is good. solid quality and rather quiet. in the netherlands there not hard to find through the internet.
for a case i can certainly recommend lian-li. not that cheap, but worth looking into.

it's clear to me you know what you want and you know what you're doing. i hope my rambling helps a little. :D

[Zhnujm]

just to make you feel a little better rui, my xp1800 goes up to 75 degree under full load.

[rui]

Zhnujm, that 75 degree you pointed, is celsius?
I didn't know that a cpu could get so warm.
Well, if you don't have any problems at that temp, i am a bit more confident then.

Thanks for your input.

[Zhnujm]

yes, its celsius (you are not the first who asks.. ;) )
not that i recommend anybody to go for such high temperatures, but i like my pc silent.
btw, the temperature can be very different from board to board because the temp sensor is on the board not in the cpu. (the xp has a build in temp sensor but only a few mb make use of it)

[gerti67]

Hi there,

not to confuse you but from my experience with two different systems in the past moving them from desktop/midi tower to a big tower my temperatures went slightly up! - Yes, up - and I think this is quite logical as a fan has a specific volume of air that he is able to blow out of a case for example.

If your case gets bigger the total air volume of the case is higher than it is in a mini tower case and so the air within is not so rapidly heat up by the cpu and the other components as it is done in a mini tower case. The fans are blowing out the same air volume per minute but with the bigger case they transport less heat than in a mini/midi tower case I think - and this is not only a guess, these are also experienced (measured) effects I had in these two cases.

But anyway I think you're on the safe side with your temps as I run all my fans just at 7 Volts and there's no problem with my 1.2 GHz Duron doing a CCE encode for 14 or so hours. CPU temp is about 65°C then and about 52-55°C in normal operation mode.

Greetings,
Gerti

[rui]

I wasn't seeing the problem from that point of view.
Thanks for your take on this matter ;)

I guess i will follow that great rule :If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

[nikthebak]

Originally posted by rui

I guess i will follow that great rule :If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Heh, I wish I would someday be able to learn that rule.

In order to bring my PC's noise levels down with as little impact to operating temperatures as possible, I sticked few rolls of electrical tape to strategic locations of my computer case to reduce vibrations. Then I padded the interiors of the case cover with a thick wool cloth. Then I padded the outside of the case cover with plastic decorating carpet (black marble texture, looks great :cool: ). And as a final blow I replaced my default CPU cooling fan with a 19 dB 60 mm PAPST one and soldered some impurities to the heatsink in order to eliminate the "tuning fork" - effect. Temperatures went up a notch, so I took a 13 dB 80 mm PAPST for case cooling and built a cardboard airduct straight from the case cooling fan to the CPU cooling fan. Temperatures went down a much greater notch.

And still I'm not satisfied. Only a totally silent (< 10 dB) PC system is worth mentioning :p.

All this means however that I'm definetly limited to a Celeron-based system. My C950 MHz runs 28 C idle and 33 C at full mayhem :D

As an interesting sidenote, did you know that most noise from your computer comes from the vibrating heat sink instead of the fans? Under a heavy, high RPM fan the heat sink oscillates at a certain frequency producing an annoying sine wave-like sound. Inserting soft padding between fan and heat sink and furthermore, impurities to the heat sink (such as pieces of tape, soldering iron, etc.) disturbes the resonance abilites of the heat sink thus lowering the sound levels produced quite a lot.

I also would recommend building an airduct system of some sort so your CPU fan would get fresh, cool air at all times instead of recycling that 70 C steam around. Best solution would be drilling a 80 mm hole to the back of your case and then building a short airduct that goes straight to the CPU fan intake. Most efficient air cooling available :D.

[rui]

Originally posted by nikthebak

I also would recommend building an airduct system of some sort so your CPU fan would get fresh, cool air at all times instead of recycling that 70 C steam around. Best solution would be drilling a 80 mm hole to the back of your case and then building a short airduct that goes straight to the CPU fan intake. Most efficient air cooling available :D.

Thanks for sharing your experience ;)

But this last idea can't be implemented in my system, because i have a Alpha PAL 8045, which works best with a fan pulling the air out of the heatsinh, not pushing. So my gold should be a fan extracting the air around the cpu heatsink/fan combo, not a fan pushing air to that zone.

Thanks again

[theReal]

because i have a Alpha PAL 8045, which works best with a fan pulling the air out of the heatsinh, not pushing.Are you absolutely sure? Have you tried turning the fan around?
Alpha installs fans that are sucking the air out because the setup produces less noise this way, but still you get better cooling when you turn the fan around. At least this is what I read in a test on tomshardware some time ago.

On the other hand, a fanduct which sucks the hot air from the cpu out of the case is also very effective, indeed (and is very good for the overall case-temperature)

[rui]

Originally posted by theReal
Are you absolutely sure? Have you tried turning the fan around?
Alpha installs fans that are sucking the air out because the setup produces less noise this way, but still you get better cooling when you turn the fan around. At least this is what I read in a test on tomshardware some time ago.


No, i am not absolutely sure. I have the fan sucking because i've read some tests over the net saying that with alphas it's best to have the fan sucking and not blowing (please don't start having funny thoughs here ;)
Also i've mailled the alpha novateck guys, and they replied saying to stick with the sucking mode.
But i never tried the other way.

Originally posted by theReal

On the other hand, a fanduct which sucks the hot air from the cpu out of the case is also very effective, indeed (and is very good for the overall case-temperature)

Now, that could be interesting. But to implement that i definitely need a bigger case.