Overheating, HDD Cooler, upgrade,

[edp33]

Background:

I've gone through several drives in the last 2 years it's got to be down to the heat inside the case or i've been really unlucky. Graphics card, 6600GT silent heatpipe averages 120C after playing any 3D game, though the CPU is always less than 40C. The strange thing is the case is a decent quality Lian Li with 2 fans at the front near the HDD drives and variable speed setting i've always had it on max, + a fan at the top and back of the case.

i) Can anyone recommend any hdd coolers if they provide noise reduction as well that would be an added bonus as i'm thinking of getting a 75gb raptor for my main drive and a 500gb HDD for storage.

ii) For games like Crysis, Bioshock do you think it would be ok just upgrading the cpu from Athlon 3200+ on an A8N mobo to a 4200 X2 and replacing the 6600GT with an 8800GTS 640 so I can max the AA/AF at 1280x1024 on my 17" LCD, think i've got an Antec 450W psu at the moment, for dx10, Vista Home Premium 64 bit seems the best route?

[gOdman]

Hi

I think that the upgrade is worth it, to either an intel or AMD dual core, the prices these cihps are nowadays gives excellent bang for the buck (or should I say the pound? =] )

I wouldn't get vista ... yet. I have vista x64 home premium and it is quite a hassle, not on MS fault but component manufacturers (eg for printers and digital cameras etc)


I would reccomend getting XP pro, but see what others say, vista is innevitable for the future, but when you will need it is not within my knowledge! lol You will probably need it for DX10 anyway though...

8800gts, good choice, I expect you should be able to play on your 17" with all settings at max very comfortably PSU might need upgrading, have a look at a PSU calculator on the net, it'll give you an idea wether or not you need to upgrade it

120c seems pretty hot to me

godman

[IAmATeaf]

Which Lian Li case is it? I have a PC6089 (I think) which has a similar layout to that you describe but on my case the front fan intake is on the bottom of the case. If the case is on a carpeted floor it means that this intake it effectively blocked. What I've done is raise the case up off the floor using some pieces of laminate under the case feet which has helped to improve the air flow in the case no end.

In terms of other things to do you could think about changing out the standard fans for better ones with a higher CFM. As far as HDD coolers are concerned they may help but if the ambient temps inside the case get high then I personally don't see how they'd help unless you get a 5.25" HDD cooler which takes air from outside to cool the HDD.

[kungpo]

8800 GTS 320MB enough for a 17" monitor. 640MB not worth it and makes no difference (hence being pulled by NVidia).

[edp33]

Got the case a few years ago now, it's a lian li pc-69, has those blue lights either side.

It is on the carpet though, i'll try raising it a bit, thanks

yep i'll need vista for dx10 + last time I rebuilt my pc I got a message saying I can't activate windows xp as it's been activated too many times ! Well if my hard disks didn't fail so often I won't have to keep reactivating

[edp33]

Ok how does this sound? (upgrade from athlon 3200, a8n 939 mobo, 6600GT, 2gb ram)

X2 4200 £45.01
8800GTS 640MB £216.79
160gb HDD £32.25
400gb HDD £52.05
Vista Home Premium 64 £64.61
Total £410.71

8800GTS 320 is £179, so might as well pay £37 more for 640 for maximum AA/AF at 1280x1024. Psu checker said it's under 450W so current PSU should be ok.

[gOdman]

Sounds good mate,

except, is the processor 939, or AM2? Sounds a little cheap to get a 4200x2 for that price considering 939 is 'dead'


Unless of course you're buying some new DDR2 ram too? Get some 800mhz stufff cheaply nowdays.very cheaply!

640MB sounds good for only £40 extra, it's well worth the price

have fun!

[edp33]

yep it's 939, all prices from Scan

[Pob255]

well as currently stands the £37 extra is wasted on a 640mb card, esp at 1280x1024. (the only possible thing that mightg make it worth it is a future game that really need more then 320mb, which looks very unlikely atm)

PS which Antec model PSU have you got? they are not all the same.

Just had a quick look at the LianLi pc-69 case, I see the two fans at the fron have a filter, you'll need to regularly clean that.
check that the top and rear fans are working. (if you don't have a top and rear fan you should get some)
You may also want to look into enlargeing the top and rear fan holes to take 120mm fans, if you don't object to cutting hole in your case

Something like SpeedFan will ofthen monitor the hard drive temps, deffinately worth checking out the temptures to make sure it's the heat causeing failiers and not something else.
esp before going out and getting a hard drive cooler.

[gOdman]

Well that is a good price for 939, maybe just a bios update and that's it!

As or not you spend the extra £37 on double the memory is up toi you, I think it is worth it, as you shouldn't see as many drops in frame rate due to the card having additional buffer memory (should see better FPS under AF+AA)

Anyone else help on this? More RAM=Less drops in FPS


Ron

[edp33]

yep for most games 8800 GTS 320mb should be enough, I just saw this review about Bioshock and it made me think paying that £37 extra might be worth it.

"Even at the modest resolution of 1280x1024, the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB video card simply could not maintain a playable experience with 4x AA enabled in DX9. Neither the GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB nor the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT had any trouble"
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

Hmmz inside the case it says pc 602, reviews of that don't seem to have the blue front lights either side though. Yep it does get dusty at front, already fan on top and rear, that speedfan sounds interesting i'll take a look thanks

The psu is the Antec Truepower 430P, has 20amps on the 12v rail, annoying as 8800GTS's state that 26amps is needed!

Regarding the memory i've got 2gb at the moment, it's DDR 3200, don't think the board supports DDR2, or did you mean upgrade to 4gb ram?
Only have 4 slots, and currently have 4x512mb sticks so would need to replace all of them or at least 2. Might leave the memory until a mobo upgrade as DDR 3200 is kinda old now.

[DataMatrix]

The extra ram is always better

[Pob255]

You'll probably have to replace that PSU to be on the safe side.
EDIT: looking at it, I'd deffinately replace it if you want to go to a 8800gts

And no 939 motherboard used ddr2 afaik probably best to stick with the memory you've got unless you can find some very cheap 1gb ddr (unlikely)
Also unless you go for vista 64bit then extra system ram is going to be nothing, 2gb is fine esp as you have no spare slots.

The extra ram is always better

No it's not, given a choise between a 8500gt 512 or a 8500gt 256 & £20 quid change I know which I'd go for.

[gOdman]

You'll probably have to replace that PSU to be on the safe side.
EDIT: looking at it, I'd deffinately replace it if you want to go to a 8800gts

And no 939 motherboard used ddr2 afaik probably best to stick with the memory you've got unless you can find some very cheap 1gb ddr (unlikely)
Also unless you go for vista 64bit then extra system ram is going to be nothing, 2gb is fine esp as you have no spare slots.

No it's not, given a choise between a 8500gt 512 or a 8500gt 256 & £20 quid change I know which I'd go for.

939 uses DDR1 only, because the MCH integrated in the athlon/sempron is made to work with DDR1, the partial reason why a move was made to AM2 was that DDR2 was becoming more standard and widespread


More RAM is better in most situations he probably meant, such as if you have a high end card and add more memory it will benifit more that adding more memory on a low end card

Regarding RAM anyhow, if you're getting Vista x64/x86 an extra gigabyte will only make it better my system (vista premium x64 uses, at idle, 1GB of my 3GB of system RAM)


DDR1 can stil be found cheaply, in fact, if you buy from scan you can get DDR PC3200 for around £30 (at least that's what I paid for mine)

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=97647

It says it's micron, but when mine arrived it was elicir, I didnt; mind since it was for a cheap upgrade anyway




GL

[Pob255]

if there's a m or mt on the chip then it is micron

my point about the ram is that once you go above a certain amout the extra make very little differnce.
Upgradeing the CPU is going to have more effect than sticking more ram in once you hit 2gb
Vista reporting it's useing 1gb of memory is missleading because of the new way it handels memory.