Air flow and cooling suggestion

[Ginji_1]

Hi All.

I would like to know how best to use my setup. I live in Israel and the heat in summer is real bad and I dont have ac yet. I have a simbadda case with two rear 80mm fans, I have a side fan and a stock P4 cooler. I am running a Prescott 2.8GHZ Chip with a Asus P4P800Se board. I have a Albetron 5900XT card. There is lts of room in the casefor air flow.

Now my question is this. How can I keep the pc cool without paying extreme prices. My Chip runs at 49C at load with the Cooler running at max.

Should I try and get as much of the air out of the case as possible and winter when it is cold change the fans over to intake? Please let me know what you think.

Thanks
Ginji_1

[Ginsu543]

The best way to cool your cpu is to invest in a good heat sink, such as the Thermalright 948U, and a good high cfm fan, such as the Vantec Tornado or the Thermaltake Smart Fan II. That should lower your 49C load to about 45C or better. As for case fans, you should try to create as much negative pressure (fans pushing air out of the case toward the rear) as you can. I'm not sure if you can mod your case, but adding a blowhole on top of the case (remember hot air rises so having a hole on the top of the case really helps to dissipate heat out of the case) can really help. I live in Los Angeles, California and it's desert conditions here as well, so I can definitely relate about the heat during summers.

[Ginji_1]

Thanks for the suggestions, Ginsu. I will take a look into modding the case for a good airflow. How good are those coolers u mentioned?

[ElrichMeister]

anything made by thermalright is good

[PCgeek]

Yep, thermalright is the best. But that really isnt too hot, especially for a prescott. U dont have much to worry about...

[Ginji_1]

Thanks guys for the suggestions. What about case fans, I like quiet but I have a main road outside my window so I wont hear the pc anyway. So what case fans do u advise and what size?

[ElrichMeister]

the more cfm the better but louder, just make sure to have more air being pulled out than in.

[Sadistic]

thought the idea was to have equal amounts of both?

[ElrichMeister]

its better to pull out more air out of the case. so that the case can be filled up with more fresh air.

[Ginsu543]

Having more negative pressure minimizes turbulence as the air passes through your case. Turbulent air can carry less heat that is dissipated off all the cooling elements inside your case (hsf, NB cooler, ramsinks, etc.) than smooth air flow. That is why it's best to have more air sucked out the back and top of your case than air blown inside in the front.

[an3cdote]

I have some spare time, so I thought about modding a case, for my new comp after I saw few pics of amazing modded cases.
So, How would you guys design your case for max cooling efficiency?
Other than a big heatsink for the cpu, how many case fans-intake, exhaust, blowholes, other fans like the vantec or thermalright mentioned above, and other cooling elements?
Sizes?rpm?cfm?
Keeping in mind, future overclocking of whatever can be overclcked :)


Thanks guys!

[Crax]

Well... right now Ive got 4 intake, and 3 exhaust... It's actually better to have more exhaust (negative pressure) buuuut Ive kinda got a different setup. You can see how my case looked about a month ago before my duct mod :) (which is why my intake is greater...) Here's the link. (http://www.geocities.com/craxadix)

My case is setup as follows: 2X80mm intake in the front... 1X80mm Tornado intake at the end of the duct, and 1X80mm intake fan at the case side of the duct... Then we got the 80mm ehaust Tornado on top, and a 120mm exhaust in the rear. 92mm Tornado on the cpu heatsink. Also 1 PCI slot blower. My temps are always under 45C, 45C being under load... On a cool day outside temps are as low as 19C cpu and 17C case :) I cant wait til it actually gets COLD outside to see some real cold temps. Anyways, thats my setup for now... Ive still got a few ideas though :) I wanna get all my tornados so you cant hardly hear em as loud as they are...

My theory is this: The more air tight your case is, the less air can escape, which is bad cause then your just heating up the air thats in there and its not being removed... My goal is to duct my intake and my exhaust, so that I can suck in either room temp air or colder outside air (depending on what time of the year it is...) and exhaust it outside... That also helps from having my room get extremely hot. But by making the case virtually air tight less noise can escape... I like tornados, but I cant sleep with 3 of em running... Believe me, Ive tried...

[Assimilator87]

Ooh ooh :D Ginji, if you really want to replace your CPU heatsink, you should take a look at the Thermalright XP-120. It's a masterpiece. You'll have to make sure that it fits in your motherboard, but it'd be totally worth it. You said that you wouldn't hear the fan anyways so you could pair the heatsink with a Delta GFB1212VHW fan (220 CFM) or a Delta FFB1212EHE fan (190CFM). The 220 CFM fan is hard to find so I also listed the 190 CFM one.

In your first post you said that your Prescott only hits 49C at full load. That's absolutely chill for a Prescott. You really don't need a new cooler.