PC performance on hot weather

[theFRM]

Hi all ,

Just a small thread to see how are your rigs doing these summer days ?

I guess if you are in the UK , you shouldn't worry about it :)

Also , I would like to see what would you guys recommend to do , change the case for a better ventilated one , or go for a refreshing water cooling system ...

My choices would be :
case
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-034-TT&utm_source=froogle

water cooling :
http://www.watercoolinguk.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=40&products_id=266

The problem is that a W/C system wouldn't fit in my current case , but i could improvise something , and have the fan and stuff outide ...

:salut2:

[kalniel]

Going to watercooling just to cope with summer weather is a bit extreme!

You shouldn't have a problem with overheating in any room that you can stand to be in at the same time - if you are getting stability problems then something was wrong in the first place - maybe too much overclocking or bad component selection!

What is your current system and case?

[Dustwave]

You shouldn't have a problem with overheating in any room that you can stand to be in at the same timeI don't really agree with that...i've seen plenty of machines that got dangerously hot inside the case in comfortable room temprature. Usually the room itself got pretty hot a little later because of the computer, but in the worst cases a hell of a lot of heat was kept inside the case.

At what tempratures is your computer running now? CPU, GPU, system?

Get a couple of 120mm fans, put one or two in the front (input), one or two in the back (output), and preferably one in the side over the graphics card(s) aswell (input). And if there's an empty bracket on the back of your case right above and/or below your video card, take that out aswell.

If your case doesn't have the room for extra fans, get a new case, Thermaltake is a good choice (have a Thermaltake Shark myself). Cooler Master makes some great cases too, if you wanna go overkill on the number of fans you can install, get a Cooler Master Stacker 830.

[WhiteSnake76]

There are PSU with special cables to hook 3 casefans on, the PSU reads the temprature from the air flowing trough it and adjusts the fans accordingly.

Keep in mind it needs to be able to suck the warm air trough it from inside the case so if the PSU is in a seperate compartment or in the bottem of the case it wont work.

I got Be-Quiet Straight Power PSU's my self wich have this feature, works really great, and always as silent as posible.

I got 2 fans in the front and 1 fan in the back running that way, never have any temprature isues even wen the rig is pushed to its limits benchmarking Crysis it stays cool.

[theFRM]

:mad: Oh man! after sitting here writing all my stuff for 10 min , the reply doesen't get posted!

Here i go again ,
Vista U. 32bit
E4400 @ 2.9ghz 1.45v
Asus 8800gts 600/1328/1800
Asus P5B , 2GB corsair 8500 ( 2:3 875mhz 5-5-5-15 )
Artic Cooler 7 pro
500W FSP Blue Storm II
Crappy old ATX metal case with 2x80mm fans ( intake one doesen't actually have a proper intake space )

CPU idle 48/49 load 61/65
GPU ilde 79 load 85
Case 45 atm

Used CoreTemp , Everest , MBM5 , RivaTuner and all give the same temps
CPU TJmax is 100C , tested it above 85C no throttling, nice and stable
GPU as long as i don't hit 100 i'm okay , tested it at 96 , nice and stable

So yes , i always had temp probs , reckon it must be the case!
I'll just have to wait till the end of the month and invest some £ in a new case huh ?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-034-TT&utm_source=froogle

PS: how do you guys apply the thermal paste ? I've tried spreading it , dollop , line ...all the same
:salut2: and thanks for the advice !

[WhiteSnake76]

A case with good cooling doesnt have to cost that much, my other system has a Huntkey C507 where you can put 2 fans in the fron and 1 in the back + it has a Airtunnel for the CPU so it draws air directly from the outside.

Image was taken right after running some tests including Crysis GPU and CPU benchmarks to see how hot it would get.
Its showing the minimum and maximum tepratures through the test.
This was with the Old 450W PSU and the Fans hooked up to a Fanspeed controll pannel in the front (3 80mm fans running full speed during test)

Now the New 400W PSU controles them and the voltages on the components are also much more stable with the new PSU, didnt run the same tests yet to see how the tempratures are becouse its much cooler weather now than wen this test was done.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f173/RS_Patrick/hwm.jpg

[theFRM]

Hey WhiteSnake ,

Hehe , for me the word fans means 'zzzz,vvvvvv,hummmmm' , i am a bit of a silence crazy person.

Now i got me the Artic Freezer 7 and a 90mm thermaltake for the front intake , which i mounted in the case. I can tell you the 90mm is amazing , can't hear a thing ...and the video card went down from idling at 80C to 74-75.

Unfortunately i can't say the same thing about the CPU; the AC7 has 40 fins and the built quality is a bit cheaper than my AKasa 965 C2D ( 45 fins ), but much more on the silent side! can't hear a thing :)

My idle temps went up by a few degrees after installing the AC7 , so what i did was to remove the AC7 fan and put it on the Akasa heatsink ( same architecture ) and now i got a better heat dissipation with a super silent cpu fan :p

Ahhh, the joy of PCs , it's about the numbers and temps , hehe , next thing , i will lap my heatsink...

:salut2:

[WhiteSnake76]

Nice, i got 3 Arctic 80mm fans in this case and a Arctic Alpine CPU cooler for my old Socket A AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 3.2GHz 400MHz FSB CPU.

Thing that makes the most noise here is the GeForce 7600GT AGP card with a huge 2 slot cooler but its still pretty quiet.

I just always try to get 1 big or 2 small fans in front and 1 fan in the back, you might want to try a extra fan mounted on the inside of the side panel over your videocard if it really still gets that hot.

Try it both ways, so try mounting it sucking air into the case and than turn it around so it sucks air out of the case and see what works best.

Depents on the rest of the airflow trough the case wich way gives you the best results.

[Dustwave]

Hehe , for me the word fans means 'zzzz,vvvvvv,hummmmm' , i am a bit of a silence crazy person.Get 120mm fans. Because they are larger they can turn slower to achieve the same airflow, and spinning slower means less noise. And don't get just any fans, make sure it's a proper brand cause fan design can make a lot of difference in noise volume aswell.

Try it both ways, so try mounting it sucking air into the case and than turn it around so it sucks air out of the case and see what works best.Just feel which way the air is going in the airfunnel without the extra fan. You'll want the extra fan to push the air in the same direction.

[theFRM]

Thx for the imput guys , unfortunately my crappy old metal case doesen't take 120mm fans, but hey , 12 more days and i shall get a new and fresh case :)

Don't have any stability problems , but i don't like seeing those temps going up to much.
I am still on the safe side , but there is always room for improvement especially when overclocking ;)


WhiteSnake , do you see any dif. from using vista 64 ?

[WhiteSnake76]

Just feel which way the air is going in the airfunnel without the extra fan. You'll want the extra fan to push the air in the same direction.

Talking about the mesh right infront of the Videocards etc. in the side panel.
Not the one infront of the CPU, but in general what you said is corect because otherwise you might disturb the airflow and the cards wouldnt get the maximum posible airflow past them.
Only if i put my hand on the side of my case its really hard to tell if it sucking or blowing trough there but the difrence betwen the fan blowing air in there or sucking it out there is about 7 degreas (its sucking out on the rig in my sig)


As for the Vista question, I really happy with it, so far most games seem to run better and everythings more stable than with XP.
Onlything i can put against it is that it needs a more powerfull system and games run slightly slower (2 to 5 FPS) but thats not really noticable if you got a fast machine.

[theFRM]

As for the Vista question, I really happy with it, so far most games seem to run better and everythings more stable than with XP.
Onlything i can put against it is that it needs a more powerfull system and games run slightly slower (2 to 5 FPS) but thats not really noticable if you got a fast machine.

Interesting , i'll have a think about the 64bit , how about software, any brobs on that part ?

Oh , i had a look at some gaming test 32bit vs 64 bit and there isn't a big dif.
See pic attached :)

[Dustwave]

Talking about the mesh right infront of the Videocards etc. in the side panel.
Not the one infront of the CPUoooh right :)

Only if i put my hand on the side of my case its really hard to tell if it sucking or blowing trough there but the difrence betwen the fan blowing air in there or sucking it out there is about 7 degreas (its sucking out on the rig in my sig)Yeah that really depends on the rest of the airflow in the case. In my machine it's sucking air in, pushing it in between and underneath my videocards where it can go out again through the empty/open brackets or above the videocards where there's another fan sucking air out, which gets yet another push from the CPU cooler wich also pushes air towards the back again :)

The major downside about having that sidepanel fan pushing air in is dust... I really need to take it apart sometime and clean it out, and figure something out to filter out the dust without making it fugly since i have an open mesh sidepanel.

[WhiteSnake76]

With 64bit there are a few things that probably dont work anymore corectly but so far i had no big problems with software on here.

Only huge problem i encountered with Vista 64 bit Home Premium / Ultimate is that a lot of TV tuner cards dont work with it... pretty stuppid since they still post with big print on the box "Works with Vista" but it says no where that it doesnt suport 64bit.

There are filters for fans in all kinds of collors, but most common are white, gray and black, also there are difrent colored fine mess filters.
There are also fans now that are of antistatic material so the dust doent collect on there blades, in that case you can fit a filter on the exhaust side of the fan to trap the dust.

[Dustwave]

There are filters for fans in all kinds of collors, but most common are white, gray and black, also there are difrent colored fine mess filters.
There are also fans now that are of antistatic material so the dust doent collect on there blades, in that case you can fit a filter on the exhaust side of the fan to trap the dust.Yeah i know, but the problem is that my case has an open mesh sidepanel. The dust doesn't come in through just the fan but through the entire sidepanel...i haven't found any kind of filter that would cover the whole sidepanel without making it look horrible.
This is the sidepanel, the dust is even on the outside cause of the airflow towards the mesh:
http://www.dustwave.net/zooi/comp_dust1_thumb.jpg (http://www.dustwave.net/zooi/comp_dust1.jpg)
And this is what the inside looks like only a couple of weeks after cleaning all the dust out:
http://www.dustwave.net/zooi/comp_dust2_thumb.jpg (http://www.dustwave.net/zooi/comp_dust2.jpg)
This is a relatively clean state since i cleaned it out a couple of weeks ago.

(Click thumbnails for full size)

[theFRM]

Nice ventilated case , but yes , with those big holes on a side dust is going to be a problem!

Where do you live ? That's some serious dust in there , only in 2 weeks.

I live in london , and my flat/my room's windows are next ish to a main road , and i suffer from a dust case , but not that serious :)

:salut2:

[Dustwave]

By a couple of weeks i didn't mean 2, but several...5-6 weeks or so. I think it's the carpet that causes it...in the rooms we have different carpet it's a lot less dusty :)

[theFRM]

I see, lol

Reckon the only place to get your pc that dusty in 2 weeks would be sahara :p

[WhiteSnake76]

If you get fans that pump in more air in the front (mnore than the PSU and Fan in back of case can pump out) you get airflowing outwards of the sidepanel or any other opening.

Make sure all the fans that suck air in have filters though or they still suck dust in

Yocu can put a speed controle on the fans so you can slow the fan on the bak of your system down so it wont suck the air out fast enough, or just get rid of the fan in the back aslong as you got a lot of fresh air being sucked in the front that shouldnt be a problem.

Turning the fan on the back round so it sucks in air also is an option to but might screw up the airflow, but that way you create a masive overpresure in the case and all the air will be blasted out of all the openings so there is no way dust can get in.

With your openmesh side panel that could actualy work because it has big enough openings to get the air out fast enough to create a decent airflow.

Just use HWMonitor to keep an eye on tempratures while playing or run a benchmark while HWMonitor is running at your maximum posible settings and see what the tempratures do.

I sugest running the Crysis CPU and GPU benchmarks (they come with the demo if you dont have Crysis) to see if theres any temprature problem.

[Dustwave]

If you get fans that pump in more air in the front (mnore than the PSU and Fan in back of case can pump out) you get airflowing outwards of the sidepanel or any other opening.

Make sure all the fans that suck air in have filters though or they still suck dust in

Yocu can put a speed controle on the fans so you can slow the fan on the bak of your system down so it wont suck the air out fast enough, or just get rid of the fan in the back aslong as you got a lot of fresh air being sucked in the front that shouldnt be a problem.Yeah i know, but the fan in the front doesn't push enough air through to keep it all cool without the rear fans. Think i'll get one of those 3-HDD bays with a fan in it to put in the drivebays in the front, see if that extra fan is enough to get that result.