Incredibly cooler Shuttle!

[Mikey]

I'm sorry, this might be boring to a lot of people, but I just had to share it!

I keep my SN41G2 in the cupboard in my desk, for the one reason that I cannot hear it once the door is shut. Temperatures were not a problem, probably mid 40s or so.

But recently I fitted a 6600GT AGP, and was not too happy at the gfx card temperature of 60-65 degrees C at idle. Then yesterday I noticed after playing some NFSU2 that it was up in the 80s (& this was with the door open, for the gamepad wire!)

Cos as many will know, there is virtually no clearance between the top of the fan where air is drawn in, and the side of the case , with a large card in the agp on left..

So I cut out a blow hole after reading about it on some other site. I succeeded in getting it directly over the top of the gfx card fan, same size, perfect circle. & You can see the silver gfx fan inside, it loooks sweeet Also you can feel it sucking the air through the hole in the case!

Well anyway, idle temps are now 50-51, and after playing NFSU2 for an hour it was still only ~64! Then I watched it drop significantly in very little time.

So yeh, I'm very happy with that


My question is, if anyone is still reading!, are these temperatures perfectly okay? Because if they could be better, I was considering setting up one of these 'push pull' configurations, you know, with two identical fans at the back of the case...

Cheers

[megah0]

watercool it!

http://www.mgh0.modded.me.uk/WC.htm

[Mikey]

Nice work! It looks cool

I dunno, there a few things that put me off watercooling.- I thought it took a lot of time, effort, and money!

Plus ive just cut a nice hole in the side of my case, so if I wc'd it it would be a waste of a hole!

[conan]

Seems like a good drop in temps, 20 degrees down with making the hole? Way to go

[Rqyteqto]

Good deal Mikey, you certainly got some great results. Judging from my rig's temps, I doubt you would do much better on your temps unless you did something radical like water cooling. Fact is I am planning the same thing with mine, except I will use a small drill (5/32", same as the holes on the side of my case) to create a grille pattern, essentially extending the grille already there. My graphics card has two smaller fans so I will have two grille patterns.

You might improve things a bit on your graphics card if you put a fan outside that hole, blowing in or out as the case may be. I think that would be more effective than a push-pull arrangement.

I am not entirely convinced push-pull works all that well. Counterintuitive as it seems, my recent research indicates various results but seems to agree on one thing, doubling the fans will not double the flow rate, more like perhaps a 25% increase. Meanwhile, you will have twice the noise and power usage. I think it will work best if you use the technique to reducing the RPM of the fans so the overall noise will be less. With two fans running slower, there may be significantly less noise.

Here's one site: http://www.papstplc.com/features/articles/art006 Pabst is a pretty well known name in fans so I would put a lot of faith in what they say.

Here's another, though its a bit more technical:
http://www.comairrotron.com/engineering_notes_02.asp

[Mikey]

Cheers

Thank you for the info Rqyteqto. That is a good idea re: another fan outside gfx card hole. I hadn't thought of that, I'll probably give it a go.

Regards
Mike