Temps/noise

[ekundo]

yes, another temperature and noise thread, sorry. I did do a search but didnt find any awnsers.

had my shuttle a while, but only just installed a second hard drive and a tv card.
im running a passive cooled 9600se, and a noise blocker s4. i want as quiet a system as possible, but with the new bits in the temps are getting slightly too high for my liking. under laod with fan on full, the cpu temp does about 57.

idle it used to do about 48 on 2% fan speed. currently on this, the cpu temp hits up to 57, and the hard drives hit 50 (primary, between the other hdd and the cd drive, barracuda 80gb) and 55 (slave, seagate barracuda 160gb) Just checking these are ok yeah? (edit: checked amd's and seagates websites, and these temps are within the range, gettling close on the 160gb hdd though :s)

would there be a way to lower noise and temps more? saw mgh0's watercooling thing but i move my shuttle around a fair bit so i'd be apprehensive doing that.

cheers for the help guys

[Rqyteqto]

Would help to know the model you have.

However, while your CPU is probably in no danger (a bit high but not excruciatingly so), your hard drives are definitely way too hot. Anything over 40 is supposed to dimish their longevity and the hotter the worse the damage.

As to what to do about it, hard to say. Like Volkswagen used to point out, all cars are air-cooled, just some have water in a radiator in between the engine and the air. A passively cooled graphics card , unless its outside the box or somehow separated from the rest of the case, is really cooled by the case fans and that's probably the major source of your heat. Now you've added more heat sources and reduced air flow, so it gets hotter. The only solution is to get more air flowing through there or to somehow redirect the heat from your graphics card.

Might help to provide more air vents around the graphics card or to add a special fan just for it. Otherwise, turn up your existing fans.

Meanwhile, I would suggest frequent backups of any critical data, external backups as your internal drives are both subject to failure.

[ekundo]

got the fan running 100% at the mo, will have to leave it at that untill i can sort somethign else out, guess its new gfx card time, i could get rid of the tv card but getting a card with a video in or something. How comes the seagate website says their drives are good to 60 degrees?

oh, its a SN45G, knew i forgot something.

[Rqyteqto]

Yes, they do state 0 to 60 but I wouldn't let mine run above 45 for very long.

What temps are you getting with the fan at 100%?
100% is a lot different than 2%, a lot different. How about 70%, maybe even 50%. Doesn't have to be extreme one way or the other.

[ekundo]

at 70% and 50% the noice is hardly any differant as all. the hottest hard drive sits at about 45-46 when under full load fan on full it looks like, ran it hard yesterday to test this.

If i got a new gfx card, like a 9700pro, would it help temps if i drilled some holes in the case over where the fan would be? i dont see that theres much point drilling the holes over the passive cooled card.

[Rqyteqto]

I am not sure I understand, was the noise not different than full or not different than 2%? Also, what were the temps like?

As to drilling some holes for the Grahphix card, yes, that will generally help, particularly if you drill them right in the area where the fan intake is. That would be a circle right over the fan.

Actually, drilling holes for a passive cooled card would make more difference than for an actively cooled card. Passive cooling depends on radiation and natural convection. Radiation would be helped slightly by more holes near the heat sinks as they would be looking at lower outside temps to radiate to rather than the warmer case. But radiation, though much more critical in passive cooling than in active cooling, is still a minor piece of the pie. Natural convection works by the effect of warmer air rising and being replaced by cooler air which then gets warmed and rises to be replaced by cooler air and so on. Its not a particularly powerful effect, though it is very efficient, something like 99.9%. Anything that reduces resistance to the air rising and the cooler air coming in to replace it will help a lot. Adding holes directly above the heatsink will allow that air to escape as efficiently as possible sort of like a chimney, it also gets that heat out of the case. Adding holes below the heat sinks will allow cooler air from outside to slide in easily and replace the rising warm air. It looks like there's a 'grille' of holes right below where the intake of the graphics card is.

[ekundo]

ok, cheers dude, looks like i'v got some drilling to do when i get home.

thanks for your help

[noah]

carefull with the 9700pro, i added one of those to a mate's shuttle sn95g5 and it was warm and toasty. much much hotter than my old 9600 passive. the ramsinks on it were very hot to the touch and so was the main hsf. you might find even tho it has a fan on it the temps are still high.

just thought id let you know my experience

[ekundo]

cant afford one atm anyway, im guessing im going to be drilling holes in the top of the case when i get home form uni over easter. over the card is where im guessing its best

im tempted to just take the second hard drive out and have it in a caddy, would save alot of effort