Minimum noise - Max cooling wrangle

[Midlandhero]

Ok... Here we go...

After taking points on board with respect to my previous thread, i've since found the manual fan controllers (posidrive screw ones) on my Akasa LED fans, and have turned them down to the lowest setting, which has made significant improvements to the noise level. I've got my Enermax 431w PSU running at top speed to try and balance the cooling, and the CM 110b original rear outtake fan, doing the same...

I've never clocked the case temps before, but i've been using this "Speedfan" program in conjunction with the slower fan speeds, and I clocked the following temps, whist doing a defrag on my main drive - these are results after about 4 hrs uptime and the defrag:

Athlon XP2000 CPU: 47-51c
IBM 80G Hard Disk (main drive, defragged today): 27-30c
Old Seagate 20G Hard Disk (secondary, not defragged): 25-27c
Case: 30-34c

Now, i'm asuming that this is a bit high, but I really don't wanna go any louder, now i've adjusted the fan speeds, but I am concerned about case temps getting too high (it'd go 50+ if I watched a movie, and I might as well fry us all breakfast on top of it). :(

My Motherboard is an Abit KX7-333R, and is still using it's original fans and heatsink. What I want to know is can I keep the voltage on the fans low like this, if I improve the cooling/heat transfer to/from the CPU? In fact, can I keep the voltage of the fans low AND still lower the internal temperatures to a respectable level? :confused:

Sorry if that's a bit long-winded, but i've been p***ing around with it all night, and i'll fry my brain from sleep deprivation, before I fry the PC!!!

Any good suggestions and product recommendations, Team?

[Alan]

If you check my sig you'll see what I use in my 110b. Point is, I only have a low power fan on the PSU, low on the CPU, a 19cmf Papst fan on rear outlet, and a low setting 80mm fan blowing air over the graphics card. The other three case fans are switched off.

After gaming, the CPU is up to about 50°C and the case goes up to about 40°C at the very worst. At all other times, the case temperature is 30°C or less.

Why does your case temperature go up so much? It shouldn't be happening at all and I would suspect the sensor rather than the heat. All your other temps. seem to me to be not unduly high.

[Midlandhero]

Thanks for the reply, Alan.

I just got the "Speed Fan" program yesterday and it is based on temperature sensors on the motherboard that it picks up. It's a bit difficult to pin-point which is which, so the case temp may actually be from a 2nd mobo temperature, which has been recorded, so it may not accurately reflect the case temp. In fact, it may just be a naff program, truth be told. If you could recommend any other good freeware monitoring software that is not too complicated to use, then I could give it a second testing and see if that makes a difference.

I wouldn't mind knowing what safe operating temps are for an Athlon XP2000, mind you.

Maybe a better heatsink would cool things down a bit in and around the processor, but I don't know how much difference the higher grade heatsinks and CPU coolers would make, having never used one - any suggestions?

[Kynoch]

Them temps are perfectly ok for a CPU, start taking action when temps stay in the high 60's.

[Midlandhero]

Is that still so with a Athlon XP 2000 - it's not as if that's particularly fast under today's specs?

I am just planning ahead, really, for when I upgrade it in the future. I'm sure that if I went 2.6Ghz+, things would be cooking a lot more, so i'm just trying to guage the validity of the present set-up.

I may run a film tonight and see how that effects things, to see if it can run smoothly, without overheating too much.

What difference does a better CPU cooler/heatsink make to the processor/case temps? - i'd be interested to know, because I could probably then drop the idea of getting the Pyramid V, then - opting instead for the underclocked and quieter front intake/upper exhaust fans, and the cooler processor and mobo, as a compromise.

[conan]

Do you know if your CPU is a Palomino or Thoroughbred? This will make a difference to your CPU temp. The T/Breds run much cooler. When comparing my own XP1700 T/Bred with equivalent Palomino's with friends I'm seeing about a 7/8 degree decrease at stock speeds ie. T/Bred 32/33 degs, Pal 40/41 degrees (both at idle on stock air cooling).

As far as the case temps go, I've been recording mine and doing various experiments for the last couple of weeks. I've not finished yet but what I think I'm finding is that my overclocking is having a knock on effect through the rest of my temps. I've upped my Vcore and VMem voltages so I would expect the temps to rise. My CPU now runs at around 45/46 idle and 53/55 under full load. The temps on my VGA card have risen by about 5/6 degs at stock. I guess that the rise in CPU temps raises the case temps which is the ambient temp in which all the components are sitting. So, the VGA card temp rises, the CPU temp rises a little more and so on until things reach equilibrium.

What I'm trying to do at the moment is to see if I can establish some parameters or ratios so I can take some of the guesswrok out of all this. Of course the other thing which hinders this is the ambient room temp. Talk about banging my head against a wall:confused:

[Kynoch]

Thw new AMD CPUs are on different dies to your 2000, because a CPU is faster doesnt mean it will run hotter really, if you buy a new retail CPU it will come with a better heatsink than the one your currently using.

You could always go and buy a new heatsink, something like the Alasa 824Cu for about £16 would do you fine, in comparrison to a stock cooler.

The amount of heat kicked out by your cpu and how fast the heatsink can disperse this will have a direct affect on your case temps especially if there is little ventilation for the case.

[Midlandhero]

Not that sure, Conan - how do you spot the difference? I got the processor from a computer fair, so I don't know the finer details, but i'd be interested to find out.

The thing is, my processor hasn't even been overclocked, so it's running as normal, so I was a little concerned about the temperatures, really - the last thing I wanted was to have to have the fans on full pelt, because i'm finding it increasingly more difficult to concentrate - especially whilst trying to learn Dreamweaver MX from a manual! :rolleyes:

[conan]

Here's a great link that will tell you everything there is to know about your AMD CPU. The only drawback is you need the 3 blocks of digits off the CPU so if you haven't recorded them you will need to take your heat sink off. It's well worth a look though. for example, my CPU (XP1700+) is a downgraded XP2600+.

Link here (http://mp3.zonebg.com/cpu/cpu.php)

[Kynoch]

You can take your heatsink off and just look at the shape of the core for easy recognition of the core type.

[markn]

I am a linux user myself but if you have a via chipset you could take a look at vcool, it sould significantly reduce cpu temps when cpu usage is low

http://vcool.occludo.net/

I've not used it myself but I have followed instructions from here

http://cip.uni-trier.de/nofftz/linux/Athlon-Powersaving-HOWTO.html

to do something similar in linux. Apparrently there can be some issues in some systems, so you may want to do some homework but I'm very happy.

Mark