GameBanshee Forums

Originally posted by Mr Sleep
I recall reading, (could find the article if you want) that too many cooling fans can actually stifle the movement of air through ones machine, it is better to have one more powerful cooler than two. I don't have one at the mo, so this is just second hand knowledge.

A lot of it also depends on how much time and energy was put into airflow management. I am slow to put a lot of extra cooling into a computer built by a retailer because many of them custom-build their cases and take airflow into account. For instance, we have some older Dell Optiplex machines at work which have a plastic cover over the CPU heat sink that channels air towards a fan that blows air out of the case. What happens in a lot of home-built computers is that people put big, bulky cards into their machine that disrupts airflow and they do not put their cooling fans in the right places.

Other times, people will orient all of the fans in their computer to blow air out of the computer thinking that they are doing the machine a favour by expelling all of the heated air coming off of the CPU, the video card and the hard drive. What they forget is that there has to be some mechanism for cool, fresh air to come in to the case, just as your car is made so that cool air flows over your radiator to cool off the engine block. I've read that it's actually better to pick a direction you want the air to flow (front to back or back to front) and make sure that all of your fans are blowing in the same direction.

One other thing I've seen (but never used) is hard drive coolers that attach to the screw-points under a hard drive and blow cool air on to the hard drive. I think these may be the kinds of fans that do more damage than good by altering the airflow within the case. I also think that if you're working your hard drive so much that it needs its own cooling mechanism, you have larger cooling issues than just bolting a couple of fans to it.

Unless you're going to subject the guts of your computer to wind tunnel tests, I am of the opinion that you can never put too many cooling fans in a case, but you need to have some plan for air flow both inside the case and in terms of moving hot air out and pushing cool air in.

Originally posted by HighLordDave
One other thing I've seen (but never used) is hard drive coolers that attach to the screw-points under a hard drive and blow cool air on to the hard drive. I think these may be the kinds of fans that do more damage than good by altering the airflow within the case. I also think that if you're working your hard drive so much that it needs its own cooling mechanism, you have larger cooling issues than just bolting a couple of fans to it.

Unless you're going to subject the guts of your computer to wind tunnel tests, I am of the opinion that you can never put too many cooling fans in a case, but you need to have some plan for air flow both inside the case and in terms of moving hot air out and pushing cool air in.

That is pretty much exactly what this article described, they had put loads of coolers in a machine and did a test to see where the air went, turns out it ended up sitting in the middle of the machine not travelling out of the case.

My over-riding problem is that i haven't got any thermal compound on my chip at the moment, when i was installing it i didn't have any and i was to quick to get it working, i will probably get some this week or next, at which point i think i wont have so much problem.

As for rounded cables, i actually have one but it quite quickly broke down for some reason, for the moment i am sticking with a normal cable until the point i have proper tower cases not the mini kind, once i have a ten foot tall case i shouldn't have any problem putting a rounded cable in there

Also how much difference do you think the PSU makes, my current one makes an awful lot of noise but i don't know how much difference it is actually making...BTW the school of HLD's excessive length posting seems to be rubbing off on me

Airflow is something I've looked at quite carefully. I have heaps of fans in the case, but they are all designed to take cool air from the front of the machine and push it through to a couple of extraction fans at the back. This is why I got the rounded cables, as the intake fans are in front of the hard drive. Flat IDE ribbon cables really disrupted the flow.

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
Airflow is something I've looked at quite carefully. I have heaps of fans in the case, but they are all designed to take cool air from the front of the machine and push it through to a couple of extraction fans at the back. This is why I got the rounded cables, as the intake fans are in front of the hard drive. Flat IDE ribbon cables really disrupted the flow.

I did used to have an extractor fan at the back of my machine, shame it started knocking the trip off, lets say it didn't really help my gaming much

Look at us with our pawltry replies, please master HLD tell us how to be bigger

I'm going to assume there's meant to be a comment in there @Sleep.

EDIT - much better

Originally posted by Mr Flibble
I'm going to assume there's meant to be a comment in there @Sleep.

EDIT - much better

You assumed correctly, i am just trying to fill some space up so i fee like more of a man against HLD's insane posting size

Originally posted by Mr Sleep
Look at us with our pawltry replies, please master HLD tell us how to be bigger

Just rub your post a little bit . . .

"Insane"? "Excessive"? What's up with that? Is it wrong to post in complete sentences? Or in complete paragraphs? That's why you guys can't tell that I'm really a redneck southerner; I don't write the same way that I talk. I think that Mr Sleep is just feeling threatened because Buck is going to change the post count to character count and he'll no longer be the top-poster around here . . .

@Mr Flibble:
Have you ever tried one of the cases with a side-mounted fan? Or how about one of the cooling fans that fits into a full-size bay and sucks air into the case that way?

I just bought a case with a neon-blue glow-in-the-dark side mounted fan, but I haven't had a chance to put anything else in the case yet. I was wondering if anyone has seen lower system temperatures with one.

I'm running an Athlon XP 1600+ at around 40° C. I probably could get it down below 35° but this would mean not having my computer standing in a corner [there simply is no better place for it from the practical point of view], using all four case fans [instead of two, practically turning the computer into a stationary vacuum cleaner] and running my CPU fan at full speed [3800 rpm instead of the approx. 1800 rpm I'm running it at - which means noise instead of silence and noise annoys me unless I make it myself].

As many people said above, airflow is important. If you need a simple solution, adding an additional fan on the backside of your case can work wonders, given the fact that there is an entry hole for fresh air somewhere on the front of your computer. The best cooler won't work if there's hot air in the case, so blow it out. A single additional fan, harvested from a broken power supply once resulted in a 15° C temperature decrease in my computer. Of course there are also less simple solutions and so I said to myself "this was simple, and now I'll try to overkill the problem".

With my additional-fan-experience in mind [and with the idea of having a good looking, silent, well cooled computer which was still standing the corner] I went for a be-all-end-all case and cooler solution. Of course it did cost me some money but the idea was that case, cooler and cables are the computer parts with the longest life expectation. Unlike processors and video cards they don't lose much of their value in a couple of years and I don't think the ATX standard will be replaced in the near future. After studying a good amount of reviews and falling in love with shiny aluminum cases I went shopping and got myself a Coolermaster ATC 201 case, a Thermalright AX 7 cooler with manually adjustable 80 mm fan and a bunch of round cables. I put the whole thing together with the innards of my old case and so far I don't regret a single € I've spent on it because it works - and looks - perfect. In fact I am able to trade a good part of cooling capacity for silence and still have a surprisingly low CPU temperature.

Originally posted by HighLordDave
"Insane"? "Excessive"? What's up with that? Is it wrong to post in complete sentences?

Yes it is indeed absolutely wrong and shoulf be forbidden under section C of the act against punctuation and grammar, signed by Dubbyah himself!

I finally got my CPU temp down 53 after about 4-5hrs, i installed a case fan at the front with a healthy dolup of superglue, that seems to have worked wonders i also sorted out a few cables and used a rounded cable i found lying around at home, all in all not bad, i also removed the heatsync off the CPU thinking that i hadn't put any thermal grease on...i was wrong, so i scraped off what was their an applied some nice new silver thermal grease, very nice it is to

Do the rounded IDE cables actually result in more efficient cooling? Are they worth the cost? Why pay extra for them when you can just cut between the wires on a standard ribbon cable and use a wiretie to make it less of an airflow obstruction? Also, have you heard of rounded SCSI ribbon cables?

Originally posted by HighLordDave
Do the rounded IDE cables actually result in more efficient cooling? Are they worth the cost? Why pay extra for them when you can just cut between the wires on a standard ribbon cable and use a wiretie to make it less of an airflow obstruction? Also, have you heard of rounded SCSI ribbon cables?

Logically it would result in better airflow and since my fan is at the front pushing cool air in i would assume the use of a rounded cable would help, although i only had one so the other two are still standard cables. Mine were no real extra cost and like i say i had them lying around, i can't recall why.

One could just do as you suggested, one problem for me is the lack of ties at the moment, i endeavour to get more at some point. What i have realised in all this is that my PSU is making the bulk of the noise, perhaps i should just fork out 49 quid for an enermax one

No i haven't heard of rounded SCSI ribbon cables, i assume they aren't produced since the market for SCSI is much more select.

I found this review of rounded IDE cables and it claims that they reduced the temperature inside the case by 2°C.

My question becomes this: Is it worth spending the extra cash ($10.99 USD per cable) on rounded IDE cables for 2° of cooling?

By the way, the link provided by that website did have both 50- and 68-pin rounded SCSI cables as well as floppy drive cables.

This morning my pc died I wondered if it might be the power supply, things pointed in this direction, so went out and bought a new one. Getting close to the inside of the PC however, I detected an ominous burning smell It is beyond me, I think, I am reduced to a laptop and waiting for the man who knows to come around and take a look...

Can you tell where the burning smell is coming from? Was the machine making any funny noises before it died (the classic sign of hard drive failure)? Is your case speaker making any noises? If your motherboard detected the machine overheating, it may make a noise that sounds like an ambulance siren.

You might also check all of your cooling fans (including the ones on your CPU and your video card) to see if it was a bearing in one fo them that failed.

Since you have a new power supply, plug it in and see if it boots up. If you then find that something is still generating smoke or smells like it's burning, check everything with moving parts to see if they're running smoothly.

What kind of motherboard and CPU do you have? Some boards have protocols in the BIOS that will freeze a computer if the core CPU temperature rises past a certain point. If you're motherboard does not have this functionality, you might check and see if your processor has melted into its socket.

If the smell is gone after putting the new power supply in, it could have been something inside the power supply, maybe the fan or something else; either way, don't open it up and don't try to fix it unless you're absolutely certain you're not going to electrocute yourself.

I couldn't tell initially, but the case has been open for sometime now and the smell has gone. Since you mentioned it, I checked the old power supply and this still smells. I wasn't here when the pc failed, but my son says it was not making any noises. It just shut down. But then he is only 7, and was distracted by playing NwN....

The fan on the motherboard apears to spin freely, I have yet to check the graphics card...

I did get as far as installing the new power supply, but there was no power to the machine. I am starting to think that perhaps the power supply has killed the mother board on some kamikaze mission

This is the motherboard http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/00q4/001220/ The processor is an Athlon Thunderbird 1 gig (praying it has survived the trauma - I was not going to build a new pc until next year *sigh*)

I will not open it up! I consider this part of a pc disposable. The old one is four years old now, I wish I had replaced it when I upgraded the mobo and processor etc...

Thanks HLD

I've never heard of a power supply killing a motherboard in its death throes, but it's certainly very possible, especially if you had a power surge over an unprotected line (you do have a surge protector and/or UPS connected to your computer, right?).

If you old power supply still has a burnt odor, I'd say that was the culprit, although that does not exclude any additional problems your computer may be experiencing. Did your new power supply come from another computer or did you buy it retail (and with a warranty)?

If your motherboard is fried, you might check your documentation and see if either the board or power supply can be replaced under warranty. If you have a surge protector/UPS, you might see if it has a guarantee that covers computer components and you might get your power supply, motherboard and anything else that was fried replaced at no cost to you.

Hmm...ok, this sounds a little more encouraging then. My pc is plugged into a 4 way adapter that is surge protected (specifically for computers), which in turn is plugged into a surge protected wall socket.

Ok. The new power supply is a brand new one bought from PC World (retail). The only thing is I am not sure if they will take it back (if it is not required) since I have tried to fit it. Maybe they will...but, that said, it was only £25 so I might as well have it fitted now anyway.

I am going to ask the man who I bought the upgrade from to check out the pc, he will tell me if he can return it under warranty - though I feel it is unlikely since it is about 15 months old, and I think the warranty would have been for 12 months...

The company I bought the power surge protector from, though, have unfortunately gone out of business.

I will see what my PC Doc has to say about the mess, and let you know the outcome. Thanks for the advice, HLD, you have given me some questions to ask him

@HLD a *hug* for your help

I am not fried!!!

I just wasn't violent enough when pushing the connector for the new power supply into the motherboard Weak women *tch* but I am not a believer in forcing things, though this obviously demanded it.

All I need now is a power cable for the monitor, since it originally ran off the pc and cannot anymore.

I am a happy chappy!!

Originally posted by Yshania
I am not fried!!!

I just wasn't violent enough when pushing the connector for the new power supply into the motherboard Weak women *tch* but I am not a believer in forcing things, though this obviously demanded it.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Yshania!

You're computer is fried; at least, that's what you tell your husband. Here's the story: The new power supply is fine (the computer tech said so) but your motherboard is bad. You need him to give you £100 to buy a new mobo. You also need to buy/build a new computer (since the other one is so old and unreliable) and it will cost £900 to build the machine that you posted over on the other thread (a bargain compared to its off-the-shelf retail price).

So you get a new computer, you give your old computer to the kids and you pocket the £100 that supposedly went into the new mobo and spend it on Pampered Chef, Longaberger baskets or whatever it is you girls across the pond like to spend money on.

You harp upon the fact that he's getting a new car and the least he can do for the rest of the familiy is buy a new computer for everyone else to enjoy.

I agree with HLD! How often does an opportunity like this come along!

Good to hear all is working again. I've seen motherboards that have been fried by a bad PSU, and it's not a pretty sight. Usually the area around the power connector is a bit blackened and we all know what burning PCB's smell like! Ick!