Help SS4Brolly with his PC cooling problem!

SS4Brolly

SS4Brolly

CAGiversary!
Okay, here's the situation. I've noticed my PC has been heating up a lot lately. I've only had it for a few months, but now that the weather has warmed up and my room isnt a brisk 60 degree's all the time, I cant rely on that cold air.

Right now, I only have Firefox and AIM open (Along with a few other minor programs, processor is under 5%, and Im at 36c Mobo and 40c Processor. I do have fan controller hooked up, and I keep my front, side, rear, and processor fan on the lowest speed, or everything on half during gaming/high demand sessions. This little problem first came up when last weekend, after playing Doom 3 for an hour or so, I checked my temp probe and it said my processor was at 55c. Not good.

I even drew a crappy little diagram to help.



I have a AMD 64 3400+ processor. This is my heatsink/fan. http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/venus/si/a1826.htm I keep it turned down because 45db fan is WAAAAY too loud. Cooling is important, but I want things QUIET.

Okay, here's what Im thinking.

1) Fix the 2nd fan in the back. I bought 3 nice/quiet case fans a while ago, and hooked one in the back, and one that I put in the back isnt working. I've been meaning to fix it, but opening up the computer is a big hassle and Im a bit lazy. This should help, some.

2) Add another front fan.
I have a spot for my front fan, but my case (NZXT Guardian)'s front fan barely has a front opening for the front fan. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811146001
That's it. Now, Im thinking of adding one where the DVD Drives go. I would remove the 2 extra plastic pieces on the front, and use zip-ties to attach a quiet, 120mm on the metal grating behind it. This would give some good airflow to the main section of my case. It would be cheap, which is a plus. This is the fan Im looking at.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835129241
+37 cfm would help, me thinks.

Or possibly.

3) Replace my heatsink fan with a better, quieter, fan. Having a quieter fan on the heatsink would allow me to turn it up more without having a large noise problem.

If I left anything out, I'll try to add it.

Or any other ideas welcome.

Thanks!
 
A few thoughts.

1) This should definitely be your first item on your plan of action. If this helps enough, you won't have anything else to do / buy.

2) If you're going to install a fan in your drive bays, remove the metal grating behind the plastic slot covers. These will kill your airflow and pulling air through all those holes will add unnecessary noise. If you must insist on installing a fan there, try to rig up something like this guy did.

Also, that turbine-inspired fan won't push that much air. Here's an excerpt from Dan's Data on the subject.

Dan's Data said:
The reason why computer fans all look the way that they do is that when you want to move air against relatively little resistance - which is the situation in computer cooling - you want few fins, with lots of room between them. Computer fans have five (or so) blades, rather than only two (some very fast model planes have one bladed propellers with a counterweight on the other side, but that's really hard on the bearings), because they'd make too much noise if they had two and spun faster. They'd be more efficient if they were two-bladed, though.

Anyway, a turbine design, with many small blades with little space between them, is what you want if you're trying to get power from a passing ducted airflow, or if you're pushing air into a duct that's got a lot of backpressure. That's why jet engines have those kinds of fans in them, and that's why everybody thinks a turbine fan is the coolest looking kind.
Click to expand...
3) This may be a good route to go as well, seeing as it will have the most direct effect on your CPU temp.
 
Well it seems like you got it all under control. It's almost impossible to keep the case running in summer as nice as it is in winter. Do you encounter crashing? You didnt mention that part so I'm assuming your computer is running fine despite the higher temperatures you're getting now.

I think having a larger case fan or a faster case fan in the front panel of the case (where the cooler ambient air enters the case) can help reduce the overall case temperature by a little bit, assuming the air can exit the case from the back efficiently. From the pics at Newegg, the holes are pretty small to suck in enough cooler air from the surroundings. But if you look under that front panel, are there holes at the bottom of that plastic panel? If there are, then you can perhaps raise up the case a bit (using a wooden block or something) so more air can enter the case from underneath the front panel.

That's all I can think of for now. You can play around w/ the case fan speed and see how well the temperature fluctuates. Although you are in better shape than I am; my Shuttle XPC case is running 44C for case and 54C for CPU, while idle, with room temp at 72F (22C). I wouldn't dare to see how hot it gets when i play games.
 
Im not having any problems crashing. I just remember when I first put in extra fans last October, everything was running at sub 30c temps, and never got over 40c.

That drive-bay fan thing looks perfect. I dont know if I could rig one up myself though.

I ordered another stick of RAM last night, so when I put that in soon Ill fix that back fan. It should do a great deal of good. Now, on my back fans, there's a giant purple thing over it, slanted toward the motherboard (to pull the air from that, my guess). Think I should leave that on?

Ill post an update once I get things re-set up.
 
Make sure its not something stupid like a lot of dust caught in the blades of your processor fan. This happened to me a few months ago, and without even opening the case I assumed I either had a virus or CPU fan problem b/c the comp kept crashing. It was hitting temps in the mid 60's though. I just had to clear the dust out of the processor fan, and the CPU temps got back down to the 40's as normal, that was it.
 
[quote name='lionheart4life']Make sure its not something stupid like a lot of dust caught in the blades of your processor fan. This happened to me a few months ago, and without even opening the case I assumed I either had a virus or CPU fan problem b/c the comp kept crashing. It was hitting temps in the mid 60's though. I just had to clear the dust out of the processor fan, and the CPU temps got back down to the 40's as normal, that was it.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. You should clean out the inside of your case and your fan blades at least once a month or more if you never shut off your pc and/or have lots of case fans like I do.

It's funny seeing old pc's being thrown away and when you open them up there is this huge friggin dust ball sitting in there, covering everything. Then they wonder what happened.
 
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