some cooling advise please

[big_block_buick]

hey everybody, a mixture of things has made me in need of some better cooling..(a) spring has finally hit canada..(b)i have installed a 32meg agp vid card..what i have now is a generic although very big heatsink with silver grease..i have room for a intake fan in front...left rear of the case(across from slots has mounting room and cut out..so i'm looking for some suggestions..should i get an agp fan 1st..and what is the other one for in/out..oh yeah and beside my psu above my mobo there seem to be room for a small maybe 2" exhaust fan...

[Jeff7]

Easy - get a Dremel tool and do some modding. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

I have done the following to two of my computers:
Pri: 1 hole cut in side panel for a 120mm fan blowing over expansion cards
Sec: 2 holes cut in side panel at about the same place as the first computer, but these are for 2 80mm fans.
Something to use too: dust filters. All fan intakes should have filters; they really do help.

[Loveless]

hey jeff, where can I rread more about these dust filters? where can I get them? I have to clean my computers internally due to the dust

[Keegan]

Fill the case with fans. That's a good first step. Then, make sure your AGP graphics card isn't too warm.

[big_block_buick]

thanks for the suggestions, i'll put in a intake fan and a agp fan and monitor the situation..the graphics card is the real culprit..after an hour of NFS 3 it takes a very long time to cool down, and the heatsink on the card is hot to the touch.

[Bsdboy]

On this machine I have an 80mm in front,
80mm in back,Enermax 430w ps with an
80mm and 92mm,slot fan,80mm blowing
across the slots,twin fan hd cooler,
small hs/fan on Soundblaster emu chip,
120mm blowhole on the side over proccessor
and I have a blorb for my vid card but
not enough guts to take off the hs/fan
that's on there now.It's a P3 500@595
temp right now is 22c on Hardware Doctor.

Bsdboy

[jamarno]

Don't get carried away too much with cooling, and don't add a fan that may actually end up impeding air flow. First find out if you need additional cooling by taking temperatures, although a small fan on a fast AGP is often a good idea because those chips can run very hot, and even the slightest breeze can make the heatsink about 5x as effective.

[Kuasimodem]

I recommend a Thermaltake Blue Orb for the video card, my Radeon 32Mb DDR seems to like it very much!

As to cooling the entire computer, I have found that a negative pressure system works the best. In my Antec case there is an extra mount and grill for an exhaust fan in the back, right by the processor. In that I put a Cooler Master high volume fan, and replaced the fan in the PS with the same fan, plugged directly into the fan bus on the motherboard. The only thing that I put in the front of the case was a filter made from air conditioner filter material(Menards, Home Depot. This is a really good open cell foam, about three sixteenths inch thick that can be washed and reused, it also seems to flow air pretty good.

Total fans are 5. One Super Orb on the processor, Blue Orb on the vid card, 40mm fan on front side bus chip, Antec slot fan below vid card in PCI slot, and two Cooler Master 80mm fans in rear of case. The two rear fans and the slot fan draw air out the back, allowing cool air to be sucked in the front. My system is running a board temp of around 75 degrees, with the processor (900 Tbird)running about 80 degrees idle and 109 under full load.

[Keegan]

On the contrary: you can never have too many fans in your PC. As long as the PS can handle it, and as long as there's room for other stuff in your computer, my philosophy has been that the sky is the limit. I have a generic 80 in the front, a Yate Loon 60 blowing over my video card RAM and the graphics processor's hs/fan, a Sunon 92 in the fan/duct assembly, a Tt Golden Orb on my Celeron-433, and a 34CFM Dynaeon Industrial 80mm fan in my power supply. My computer is very cool. (That was so punny I forgot to laugh

[Keegan]

On the contrary: you can never have too many fans in your PC. As long as the PS can handle it, and as long as there's room for other stuff in your computer, my philosophy has been that the sky is the limit. I have a generic 80 in the front, a Yate Loon 60 blowing over my video card RAM and the graphics processor's hs/fan, a Sunon 92 in the fan/duct assembly, a Tt Golden Orb on my Celeron-433, and a 34CFM Dynaeon Industrial 80mm fan in my power supply. My computer is very cool. (That was so punny I forgot to laugh.)

[wildbuffalo]

I have this bay drive cooler with 80cfm air flow, and one 80mm (40cfm) front bottom blowing in.
http://2cooltek.safeshopper.com/5/34.htm?115

Wild

[Cygnus-X1]

I have an extra exhaust fan on mine, though in a way it sounds like a refrigerator heh heh..
By the way is there an actual FAn Filter product made for comp fans?
How about anything like noise dampening
materials?

[doodelsak]

Cygnus....i was reading your reply..as crazy as it sounds........i took a cozy(foam rubber soda/beer cooler) cut the bottom off of it and tapered the inside i atttached it to the back of my case over a 80mm fan it really silenced it without any rise in temp...........crazy but it works.lol

[This message has been edited by doodelsak (edited 04-03-2001).]

[jl123]

I have that bay cooler thing and it works pretty well for me. It's not noisy but I guess with the loud 60mm delta fan it's not really a plus for me. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

~Joel