Cooler CPU but hotter everything else.

Build in sig. I saw someone else having a similar problem but mine is quite different....

Earlier I had a Volcano 12, and CPU temps were on the higher side (37 idle/57 load). I have since upgraded to the TT silent Tower for the summer, and straight away the load temps are down by 10 degrees (47-48 [email protected] GHz, 1.775 vCore).

However the idle temps have remained where they were, and the whole PC heats up hugely (the case is hot to the touch after an hour of running at full load). My reading of the problem is the heatsink is oriented with its entire exhaust directed towards the power supply, which has a 92 mm intake but because it’s temp controlled doesn’t move too fast. The sides of the heatsink shroud eliminate any possibility of the rear fans moving any air out of the sink area. Socket temps are also up by 2-3 degrees as a result of no/low airflow on the board area that the earlier HSF had.

And lastly, all harddrives have gotten hotter, much hotter than earlier, the Maxtor SATAs are about 48 degrees. I suspect I have a problem with exhaust ability, becoming dependent only on the PS exhaust because of the orientation of the HSF, where earlier there was the PS + 2 80 mm rear case fans for exhaust. Can't be an intake problem because the CPU diode temps are down by 10 degrees. Right or wrong?

With the case side off the temps are almost unbelievable, 32 idle and 43 load (ambient is about 30 degrees). I would change my case if I was convinced a case change would work. All cases have conventional ventilation that I can see, and the heatsink is not very conventional. Any ideas on how I can keep the rest of my PC cool in addition to the CPU? The best HSF we can buy around here for any amount of money is the Tower 112, this guy’s copper cousin. TR isn’t available, sorry. I’m open to any ideas except a chimney because aesthetics are a little important to my GF.

Could you maybe put a link to what kind of case you have and how many case fans you have? And also where there positioned at. Also do you have any wires that could be blocking airflow?? Just a few possible problems.....

PEACE

EWBatOVAclockin said:

Could you maybe put a link to what kind of case you have and how many case fans you have? And also where there positioned at. Also do you have any wires that could be blocking airflow?? Just a few possible problems.....

PEACE

Click to expand...

It is a standard ATX case, let me describe it.

It has 6 3 1/2 inch drive bays, 1 of which is exposed. The exposed bay has a floppy drive fitted. There are three hard drives in the rest of the bays, each with the space immediately above and below vacated.

There are 4 5 1/2 inch bays, all of which are exposed. There are two optical drives in the two lower bays, and a 3 1/2 inch IDE drive on a mounting kit in the top bay. The front of this drive has a passive intake with a dust filter, and was fairly cool till the HSF change.

There is 1 80 mm intake in the front. This had a fan grill which I cut out and threw away, and in its place I have put a filter made of speaker grille cloth. The intake points directly at the bottom of the 3 1/2 inch bay 'rails'.

The side cover is ventilated on the left side, the side closer to the mobo has no holes.

There are two 80 mm exhaust fans at the rear of the case, just above the ATX backplate. These are currently connected to the power supply 'Fan only' connectors.

The Power supply is an Antec True480, with a 92 mm intake and 80 mm exhaust.

Sorry couldn't find references but it is similar to the older Antec style cases.

The biggest problem is that the fan is drawing air from the bottom of the case, which should be OK except that the 6800 GT is directly below it. The exhaust is toward the PSU intake. Which is probably not as efficient as the 2 80 mm fans at the back of the case. I read somewhere that the fan could be rotated 90 along with the shroud. Worth a try but the intake will now face the super hot hard drives and optical drives.

Tough call....

I don't get what you mean when you say that the GT is drawing air from the same place as your intake fan. Is there no bottom on your case? Also you NEED more intake fans. You currently have 3 exhaust and 1 intake. That ratio is too far out of spec. Change both of the exhaust to intake and let the PSU be the on exhaust and see how that changes things. You might want to plan on doing some modding and adding a center intake fan on your side panel.

Just some suggestion's that might help

PEACE

About how many cfm do you have moving through your case? If the case is getting hot to the touch, then you do not have nearly enough air moving through it. Did you remove all the fan grills? They really cut down on airflow.

What I suggest: Remove the fan grills if you have not already, and maybe get out the tin snips and make room for more and/or bigger fans. Also, try to keep a front to back flow through the case. I lowered my case temps about 4°C by flipping my heatsink(its a tower).

EWBatOVAclockin said:

I don't get what you mean when you say that the GT is drawing air from the same place as your intake fan. Is there no bottom on your case? Also you NEED more intake fans. You currently have 3 exhaust and 1 intake. That ratio is too far out of spec. Change both of the exhaust to intake and let the PSU be the on exhaust and see how that changes things. You might want to plan on doing some modding and adding a center intake fan on your side panel.

Just some suggestion's that might help

PEACE

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions.

http://www.systemcooling.com/images/reviews/Heatsinks/TT_STower/image17big.jpg

This is a shot of how the cooler would mount on some mobos.

On mine the fan is rotated 90 degrees, so it faces the back of the PCB of the graphics card.

I will try reversing the fans. My only thing was the rear fans would maybe then pull in hot air from the PS exhaust, but I'll try anyway.

First I will try and rotate the fan shroud 90 degrees so it goes front to back, and figure out how to rearrange the bits so the intake portion of the HSF gets as much cool air as possible.

Yuriman said:

About how many cfm do you have moving through your case? If the case is getting hot to the touch, then you do not have nearly enough air moving through it. Did you remove all the fan grills? They really cut down on airflow.

What I suggest: Remove the fan grills if you have not already, and maybe get out the tin snips and make room for more and/or bigger fans. Also, try to keep a front to back flow through the case. I lowered my case temps about 4°C by flipping my heatsink(its a tower).

Click to expand...

Whoop, sorry don't have cfm data for any of the fans.

I have removed all grills as they created too much turbulence.

Side intake is a good option except I have no way to make a clean cut. I even have a hole marked, but my tin snips leave a very jagged edge, sort of when you open a tin can. Not nice on the side, too dangerous. It's ok in the back and inside the front cover, though.

I am gonna rotate the fan today and post back.

Thanks for the help.

sangram said:

I am gonna rotate the fan today and post back.

Click to expand...

Fan can't be rotated

So I'm pretty much stuck and have to look for a well-vented case with a side intake.

Leaving the case side off drops the CPU temp down to the case temp level, 32 c apiece so the cooler is working nicely but the case is obviously not cutting it.

Unfortunately can't operate with the side off as my hard drives get very hot, since they depend mostly on passive airflow, which gets thrown out of the window when the side is off.

Case hunting time, methinks.

sangram said:

Fan can't be rotated

So I'm pretty much stuck and have to look for a well-vented case with a side intake.

Leaving the case side off drops the CPU temp down to the case temp level, 32 c apiece so the cooler is working nicely but the case is obviously not cutting it.

Unfortunately can't operate with the side off as my hard drives get very hot, since they depend mostly on passive airflow, which gets thrown out of the window when the side is off.

Case hunting time, methinks.

Click to expand...

I am perplexed as to why the case fans cannot be rotated? I mean they are the same on each side.

You definately need some better cooling in that case.

Perhaps you could provide us with a few pictures. Maybe we could help you out.

I don't have a camera, but I have one on my cellphone.

I'll take some pictures. Thanks for the patience and the offer to help, I'll be glad for it.

I meant the HSF fan can't be rotated, like i was planning. There is a sample pic on the link I had posted. Take a peek.

Right now it faces the video card., not the front of the case like in the sample pic.

So it's pulling hot air into the fins, from the video card. In an open case there's no problem except hard drives get very hot due to lack of airflow and air pressure.

if you're worried about a sloppy hole you might cut in the side, get one of those alluminum filter grills. They are only a few dollars, dont block air flow much, look nice, and cover up sloppy holes.

If you're desperate for a solution, everyone is right about needing more intake. I have a case that needed more intake also. As a temporary solution, I removed the bottom 3.5 inch bay cover. (bay was unused) This allowed the air to rush in, meeting the demand of the exhaust fans I had. It lowered my temps 2-3C.

As promised here are pictures. Sorry for the poo-poo quality, but they are from my cellphone camera @352x288 pixels.

First the whole case. The case is rotated 90 degrees, the bottom of the picture is actually the front.

Note the Video card HS is so close to the intake of the fan.

I still have good load temps (rising now with the onset of summer, ambient is up to 33 degrees) and if the side cover is off, I get good idle too.

Note the rear case fans are stuck in a dead zone, there is no room for them to pull any air at all.

Also note the exhaust portion of the HSF is against the PS intake, but slightly offset. Maybe a channel to restrict the airflow would help here?

After much soul-searching and market-crawling I decided to buy a case.

Not cheap, set me back a 100 bucks. By our standards a very expensive case. This resembles one of the Antec cases, but a little cheaper.

Comes with its own 400 watt power supply. I won't even bother with it, maybe it'll find its way into some other system. I was getting a grand reduction of $10 on it, the parts in it maybe worth more than that.

No intake fans. None, not even one. The entire front of the case is a perforated grill that acts as a passive intake. A recipe for a lot of dust... grill creation time...

SIX exhaust fans. 2 80 mm at the back, and 4 80 mm (yes, four) on the top, with a 4-fan fan controller. The fan controller is wired in reverse (so at max position the fans spin at their lowest speed) and 2 of the 4 connectors have beefier transistors, so those can probably take 2 fans each.

The hard drives mount on plastic trays that convert 5 1/4 bays to 3 1/2 inch bays, if required. There is the typical floppy cage that take two hard drives on its own, plus four plastic trays are supplied. The trays take a single 3 1/2 inch hard drive and have a provision to mount a 80 mm fan underneath to cool the drive, if required.

Pics.

the case overall...

Fans...

Inside view

Fan controller closeup and drive trays.

Could not find a single case with a side intake except for one Antec model with a clear side, but that was only a single 80 mm way down low on the case side. It also didn't have place to mount my four hard drives without cramping up the layout.

This case seems roomy enough and the four exhaust blowholes seem nice. The fans click a bit so may need to be switched off when recording, I'm gonna be rigging up a switch for it.

I'll post back after the weekend on temps.

Happy Easter everybody!

Quick-shot results:

At stock, temps are down 3 degrees idle and 5-6 degrees load (45-46).

At 2.4 Ghz, Temps are down 8 degrees at load and 3 degrees at idle (idle 37, load 50-51

No temp difference between turning the top fans to full speed and lowest speed. So have been kept on lowest speed.

All in all, I'm happy now. Drives mounted in the lower part of the case get quite warm (50 degrees) and those mounted in the upper bays stay below 40 degrees. But a couple of fans in the drive trays will fix that, I'm not too worried, just a little lazy since I spent a lot of time doing cable management...