The Official Cooling Thread!

Newegg has rebates on a lot of PC P&C PSUs right now putting a lot of them under 150 and even a couple under 100.

 

10% Tennessee tax skews whatever can be saved from newegg.

 

Sorry to hear that Zippy, I don't know what I'd do without newegg. Their deals have probably saved me hundreds by now lol.

 

If they have a deal that saves 20+ over the tax that's added to shipping cost for some strange reason, I'll buy from them. But I tend to go ebay for anything I can.

 

I added another HDD recently and now my temps are high 30s to low 40s. Supposedly HDD are good too 60C or something, I don't really want them that warm and since it's winter and ambient temps will rise significantly later on they'll be uncomfortably warm later on.
My case is a NZXT Zero and has 1 120mm front fan located in front of the HDD bay. I've stuck my hand in the HDD bay and from what I can feel it is moving next to no air so it'll be replaced soon. Besides replacing the fans and better case cooling is there any other means of cooling HDD that are worth while?

Thanks for the help,

Parker

 

You won't feel a great deal of air coming from any front fan, so I wouldn't concern yourself too much with that. You'll be amazed, there can be almost no airflow and HDDs will run fine. Actually no airflow, and they get hot as hell.

 

On my aero cool case the front fan drops HDD temps as much as 5 digress.

Big fans are nice

 

A fan being on or off usually does far more than that. My mate's P182 file server, with no front fan the Seagate HDDs reach 61ºC. With it running, even at a completely silent noise level, they drop to mid 40s at most.

 

I generally have good air flow so the front fan can kill 5-10, it really depends on how hot things get in the trailer. My temps are in the 30s but I keep the trailer around 65-72.

 

ZippyDSM,
I took the rear 120 and moved it to the front as an intake, added a Silverstone 53CFM 1200 RPM fan to the rear and my DeathStar dropped in temps, 13-14C! What now Idles at 33-34, used to run in my old case at 47-48C! I very much like the sideways drive bays with the large holes for airflow. Far superior to conventional front to back mounting for getting air flow through the hard drives and cooling them. you can fee a good supply of air coming through the hard drives with your hand. Cooler master even uses tool less rails that just pop in and the drive slides in the bracket and locks. Takes a whole ten seconds to do! Once you've installed the CPU, CPU Cooler and installed the MB in the case, you won't need anymore tools! I very much like my new case!

Russ

 

I prefer the old 6+ drive bay myself it lets me place 2-4 faned drives in it much easier than a 4+ side ways drive bay, tools designs are fickle, my last Case was a http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-190-1.htm, the tooless design was so so worse yet air flow was bad, even with 2 80MM fans cut into the bottom as intakes.

my new case
http://www.aerocool.us/case/AE-Plus/ae-plus.htm

I simply love it the side fan keeps my video card nice and cool, lets more air in for the CPU area so my old style zalman monster copper CPU cooler can be more effective.(new Mobo is MSI 750I platinum, the heat pipes do not get in the way of my monster CPU cooler almost thought I was going to have to buy a new one.)

The front fan adds more cool air and puts it over the HDDs I can only fit 2 faned drives in it sadly but with the fanless one in the middle I don't get above 46.

I fcking love the tool less dvd/CD/floppy drive clips/holders you pop them on twist them to hold twist them again to take off and remove the drive, this is what I'd call a universal toolless system even works on HDDs unlike most tooless cases I have see.

The only problem I have ran into is that the HDD bay is move alil bit further away from the front meaning its a VERY tight fit with angled sata ports on the mobo, another slight annoyance is the front panel USB/audio could be 15-25% longer..

 

ZippyDSM,
I've yet to see a case of that design that cools very well! Here's my temps, once I figured out which is which. All the temps are there with an AMD MB, they just don't read in the right place! LOL



From L to R the 1.5 is the CPU fan speed, take note of the two black ones next, as they are my HDDs. In my old CM Cavalier case they were 46-48C! The purple is the system temp, The dark Red/Purple is the video/Northbridge, and the green is the CPU temp. No Rocket Science to it, I just used Easy Tune to see which temps were what! Needless to say I'm very happy with my temps!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The aero cool or the case edge one?

I have a 120 as exhaust with the 120 on the PSU, I have been at least 10C cooler since I switched to the new case.

 

ZippyDSM,

The link for the Case Edge one doesn't work, I was talking about the Aerocool. I should have been more specific in my answer though. I meant that I haven't seen a case of this design cool everything in it well! Usually with this type of case the CPU and the Video cool very well! Ironically the hard drives seem to suffer the most! I had to play with the fans a little bit and add an 80mm Silverstone to the CPU Air Duct Port as an exhaust. All my fans are 1200 RPM fans and that's what I set the Silverstone at! Seems to work very well. The lower side fan appears to do nothing, either as an exhaust or intake. I guess if I had a video card in it, it would help cool it though!

Russ

 

comma at the end made it a bad link.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-190-1.htm

Lets just say my 8800 was running around 65 idle in that case.

 

Forgive me if this has already been talked about, but I REALLY don't want to read through 50 pages of this thread to find out, and I already searched and nothing helpful came up.

I'm looking at the possibility of water cooling my new build, which will be a core i7 920 on a gigabyte x58 extreme, with (eventually) a gtx295 (but I don't know if I'll bother with the GPU, maybe just the CPU and NB) in a gigabyte 3d aurora case. I'm a complete noob when it comes to water cooling stuff, but I do know that custom systems are usually better than ready made ones like the thermaltake bigwater and the likes. So, I'm wondering first of all what are some good waterblocks/pumps/rads that aren't too expensive, and how EXACTLY I would go about installation because I don't really understand bleeding and I don't want anything to leak either. And, I suppose if anyone has used or knows anything about the Thermaltake bigwaters, an opinion would be good on those as well

I know it might be pretty expensive, so does anyone think I should just stick to a TRUE 120 like I have in my current build?

Cheers

 

The GTX295 is a bit of a bum card really. The HD4870X2 is superior for 30" monitors, for lower resolutions, the HD4850X2 or a GTX280/HD4870 will do fine (Avoid the GTX285).
A good watercooling system would consist of a Thermochill rad, a D-tek DB-1 or Laing D5 pump and a Swiftech Apogee CPU block. The reservoir and tubes don't matter so much as long as they're decent quality and don't leak. Ultimately though, watercooling is a pain in the backside, and there's othing WC can do that air cooling can't, apart from the absurd overclocks (the kind of ones that see a system die in a few months from stupid voltages).

 

ok well all of that costs way more than a TRUE, so maybe I should just stick with air cooling? hate to ask, but what do you think of stuff like the thermaltake bigwater 760i or the prowater 850i?

 

They're pretty bad tbh, you'll fare better with a TRUE in all respects.

 

no problems you've heard of when mounting on 1366?