Hardware Cooling my computer help

[squeaky024]

Alrightie, so I recently downloaded CPUID hardware monitor, and I took a glance at my cpu temperature and found that it is at 60-63 degrees C on idle. My computer has 3 fans on the case, another one on my cpu, and another for the power unit, bringing me up to a total of 5 fans. A google search turned up that it is good to keep my cpu's temperature below 60c, but I can't figure out how I can do this.

my cpu is a amd athlon x2 5200+

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, if you have 5 fans but excessive temperature, the air flow in your case is either obstructed or the fans are placed at useless places.

You should look at getter a proper CPU cooler and make sure that the power supply fan can suck air through the CPU cooler. The airflow in the case is not unimportant for proper cooling, because otherwise, the CPU fan can run as fast as it wants, the hot air is just jammed against the case walls. And leaving the case open does often even increase temperatures, because the air flow is gone.

 

[Loru]

Probably the airflow in the case is disturbed by some cables or elements. Maybe one of the fans is running backwards - try to determine how air is ducted through the case.

Because of my case construction & ammount of harddrives in the case I had to install custom airduct to cool the CPU. I used cigarette smoke to determine airflow in my case (remember! smoking is bad for you!).

 

[N_Molson]

I'd say you're OK below 65°C. I have those kind of values in summer.

Simple tips that work very well :

- Dismount the side panels of the tower. You'll win easily 5°-10°C.
- Put your tower on the floor. You often have a thin layer of cold air there.
- If it isn't enough, just take a standard fan and point it to the tower. It works very well (but the temp of the room will probably rise from 1°-2°C).
- I see you're from California. We're in full summer, weather must be quite hot there. Things will go better in winter.

 

[Urwumpe]

remember! smoking is bad for you!

:givemebeer:

Mikhail Yangel would have told you otherwise.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe"]Nedelin catastrophe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

---------- Post added at 09:42 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:40 AM ----------

- Dismount the side panels of the tower. You'll win easily 5°-10°C.

If you mean by win, increase the temperatures, yes, you are right. :lol: Actually this only gives you a reduction if you already have a very bad air flow in the case.

 

[N_Molson]

I've a cheap "basic" tower, one fan for the MB, one fan for the PWR supply, & one fan for the CPU. Temps go crazy when I close the panels. There's probably no airflow at all, because the front side of the tower is completely close. There are only a few holes on the bottom of the side panels... :lol: Yeah, the tower cost me less than 40€ ! (but is german I believe)

Now, if you have "cheap" ideas that could improve that, I'll post a few pics of the tower

 

[Tommy]

In my experience, the three most common causes of overheating are:

1: Poor air flow in the case caused by poor design or (more often) obstructions. SATA drives have helped on this problem - ribbon cables used by IDE or ATA drives can easily block the air flow. Folding the ribbo cables and tying them properly is the remedy to this.

2 Undersized heatsinks/cooling fans Many prebuilt PC's are built for the "average user" who rarely uses more htan 20% of his computers capacity. Surfing the net doesn't strain a modern comouter, and often cheap components are used to keep prices down. A quality power supply, such as one made by Antec or PC Power and Cooling can reduce temps significantly - as well as eliminating the plethora of problems caused by a low grade power supply. A slightly failing PS can cause any number of problems which usually seem to be caused by a failure elsewhere. I've seen what seem to be "bad keyboards/mice, or "bad video cards", etc, which are actually power supplies beginning to fail. In the arcade game rpair buisiness, the first thing you check is the power supply - eve if the only symptom is that the "kick" button doesn't work.

3: Poorly installed heat sinks. Most CPU's come with a "heat sink tape" already installed, and most PC manufactureres use that. It works fine for PC's that are under utilized by the "average user". For a more "power user" (and gamers and orbiter users can be considered "power users"" it just ins't good enough. I always remove the "tape" (and use rubbing alcohol to remove the residue) and apply a QUALITY heat sink compund (use "Artic Silver", not the cheap white radio shack junk.) More is not better - use just enough to "wet" the surface and be sure to smear it around before seating the heat sink. A larger "after market" CPU fan is often a good investment.

It seems a bit counter intuitive, but newer , faster CPU's need to kept cooler than lower speed CPU's. The higher density chips are much more prone to heat failure. My old 900MHz Athalon has been running at around 85 degrees F for almost 10 years wihtout a problem, but a newer 65 nm chip will fail at those temps in a few months.

Also, never put a tower on a carpet - most cheap tower cases have the main air inlet on the bottom of the front panel, and carpet (and dust) can easily restrict the air inflow. keepo the case and heat sink clean. Pipe cleaners and alcohol can help clean a heat sink far better than a vacuum cleaner. In the new "non-smoking" world, pipe cleaners are more often found in the "crafts" section of a store, not the "tobacco" section.

 

[N_Molson]

I just removed the floppy disk drive from the front panel. I already disconnected it to save power & ressources, it's obsolete and had no use for it. Now there's a nice additionnal air intake, and the empty space can only help the air flow :lol: Would be the perfect spot to put a small fan.

What is said above is 100% true ! I looked at the original front "air intake", that was a good joke !! Just a worthless metal plate with a few circular holes, the air was supposed to get in through the USB plugs, 1 cm above the floor A good thing I've no carpet !

Also the cables are a real mess. I built the PC myself and attached the cables with elastics, but I just noticed that those have broken (basic elastics have a 1-2 years lifetime, a few days if exposed to the Sun).

I think I'm good for a complete cleaning of the machine !

 

[astrosammy]

Maybe taking all the hardware out of the case and cleaning everything helps. My fans are always able to cool down to a good temperature, but after cleaning the fans were able to cool at much lower speeds.

 

[cinder1992]

Well, A modern 4 core processor can get very hot, and easaly hit temperatures of up to 80C when taxed. you can get special coolers, with copper cores, to disperse the heat better. if you just have a standard heatsink, those temperatures are normal.

I have an old AMD Athlon 2 processor running at 4Ghz with liquid nitrogen cooling and it still hits temperatures of up to 70C. (yes, It's overclocked.)

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

I have the same problem - whenever I run a graphic-heavy program (such as flight sim), I hear my laptop fan go to its max speed, then my laptop shuts down because it has overheated. At this point, the back of my laptop is too hot to physically touch.

Any ideas? I know laptops aren't known for good cooling systems, but my desktop just doesn't have the power to run flight sim (I only get 5 FPS max on my desktop). I bought one of those laptop cooling stands, but it doesn't seem to do much good.

 

[Urwumpe]

I have an old AMD Athlon 2 processor running at 4Ghz with liquid nitrogen cooling and it still hits temperatures of up to 70C. (yes, It's overclocked.)

No problems with condensation?

 

[Bj]

Blow out the vents with a compressed air duster. Even if they look clean, they really might not be.

I had an Inspiron 1100 that constantly overheated. It had such a large intake of dust... I still keep blowing out all our computers every month to this day.

 

[squeaky024]

Thanks guys, It is probably the air flow since i have huge fans on the front, back, and side all blowing in, and only the power supply blowing out. And my computer tower is far from any wall, almost a foot away, and it is resting on a very well ventilated support with no obstructions to any side.

 

[N_Molson]

Update :

I put the side panels back. I closed "useless" holes with tape. I put a cardboard tube through the front air intake to the CPU/MB area.

And I did some SERIOUS cleaning ! Yeah. I detached the GPU. The copper fan air ducts were so clogged by a black, thick dust that they were inoperative. I'd never suspected such a small fan could store that much dust (almost a mud, in fact). Cleaning it was a very dirty job, my throat was hurting, and it seems that I still have some in the lungs ! (think to put some cloth in front of your nose/mouth, and wear glasses). I also cleaned the CPU with a paintbrush, a vacuum cleaner and my breath.

Obviously, that was the main reason of my overheating problems. The GPU temps dropped by more than 20°C after that (the fan was really inoperative), which obviously made the airflow more efficient inside the case.

The proof of that is that the 3 main components (MB, CPU, GPU) are now displaying very close temperatures when the computer is idle (44°C, 42°C, 43°C). That looks good ! And even when the computer is under stress (Orbiter), the GPU temp never go above 60°C, while the MB & the CPU temps are in the 45°C-50°C range), which seems perfectly nominal, especially in Summer (room temp : 30°C).

Another pointer : the temps now drop almost as fast as they climb. Which was really not the case before. Temperature "inertia" means that the air cooling isn't doing it's job (airflow + clogged fans).

The lesson of all that : cleaning your computer is an extremely serious matter !! You can download the latest drivers, it won't magically help a clogged fan... I promise I'll do it every 3 months now !

 

[squeaky024]

Tonight I will try to clean out my computer, it seems realy dusty on the bottom area and in my fans

Also for some reason today my computer was about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday, and I did not change much, but fortunately even under intensive use my core temperature does not go up that much :thumbup:

 

[cinder1992]

No problems with condensation?

there were some at first, but I added some extra insulation and it cleared right up, although the pipes began to smell a tad moldy.

 

[Urwumpe]

there were some at first, but I added some extra insulation and it cleared right up, although the pipes began to smell a tad moldy.

I would have expected this... I know that some many people experimented with vaporization cooling and ruined their computers by having moisture at the boards.

I think proper water cooling works well enough to remove the heat... 4 Ghz means you would have twice the normal heat of the original CPU, which is not beyond technology. Or a spacecraft grade heat pipe... leading to a heat exchanger ^^

 

[Tex]

After blowing dust out of your computer, be sure to wait a minute before plugging it back in and powering it up. I powered mine up too quickly after blowing dust out of it and caused it to short out. Those electronic safe air cans sometimes spit some liquid out if held the wrong way, so the wait allows any liquid to evaporate that may have come out of the can.

 

[jedidia]

Diggin' out this thread, because it's summer again... and I'm really at the end of my wits. I'm still having very regular overheat shutdowns, currently, when room temperature is around 28 to 30 degrees, after maybe 15 minutes a shutdown occurs, although I'm not really using the CPU a lot.

Stuff I have tried:

Got a new case
Got some Fans (two in, one out)
Tried to make the airflow as good as possible (tough, because the large graphics card is in the way, but it should be ok now. At least system temperature never rises anywhere much over 30 degrees, i.e. almost room temperature!)
Got better cooling paste (Bluefrost, conductivity >2.7W/m-k, resistance < 0.094 C-in^2/W)
Got a bigger heatsink and a better fan (not that much bigger and not that much better, it's hard to find a good AMD fan in bosnia)
Underclocked the CPU

Symptoms: CPU temp is alright in bios, idles somewhere around 35 degree C, if heated up falls reasonably fast down to 50 C, then much slower to 40, and veeeeery slow below.

However, after windows started up, it usually is at slightly over 80 C, if it was already warmed up a bit before this can go to 90. AND THE TEMPERATURE DOESN'T GO DOWN AGAIN! I.e. although the CPU cools nicely in Bios, it doesn't do so in windows. It stays, and it even rises slowly. Just now my computer shut down after starting up and doing absolutely NOTHING for about half an hour (I'm writing on my laptop, this was kind of an experiment). Interesting is that the CPU temperature doesn't go above 90C before the shutdown, else my motherboard would warn me. System temperature seems to stay constant at about 30 C all the time (and the major airflow goes right through the heatsink of my CPU).

Specs:
AMD 2.6Ghz DualCore (clocked down to 2.2 Ghz)
Gigabyte GA-M56S-S3 Motherboard
NVidia XT-1900 Graphics card
Enermax EG 365AX-VE Power Supply (358 Watts... I heard that a weak power suply can lead to overheating, that's why I'm posting this here. No Idea wheather that is a lot or not for my configuration).

---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:51 AM ----------

Try (with caution) what I call "manual detection". If the CPU is really at 90°C, then you should not even be able to touch it (or you'll get a bad burn). Also there should be a distinct smell of overheated plastic/metals. If you find that the temp seems alright, maybe the temperature probe is failing.

Else I had the same issue with my GPU, same temps and very slow going down too (what I call "thermal inertia"). The inside of the fan was full with "computer mud" (that gray, fine dust saturated with humidity), which rendered it completely inoperative. A good cleaning (by blowing air through it with my breath) solved the problem entirely. I wasn't aware there could be so much dust in a small thing like that. It's a matter of density, the fine dust agregates with humidity.

(copied over from the Power suply thread, where I wrongly posted initially. Sorry for the inconvieninace).

I can touch the cpu. It's hot alright, but I can touch it. Also, the bottom part of the sink is usually about the same heat. however, in my experiance 90 is touchable for a short time without any burning marks (we used to work at those temperatures with the firefighters...) There's no smell whatsoever.

What would I do in case of a bad temperature probe?

I clean my fans pretty regularly. The GPU doesn't get very hot (it's not really used when working on the desktop anyways). And yes, cleaning the Fan and sink of the graphics card was quite ugly, since I got it used.