# Cooling

## Zarathustra[H]

EDIT (rac): this discussion started out in Killing X/kdm.

I think I have figured out why it is locking up on compile.  Last time it locked up, I rebooted and went in to the bios...

My CPU (n Athlon XP 1800+) was at 88 degrees celcius!   I cant really remember the nu,bers, but I have a feeling thats bad.  Something must have happened with my heatsink, so I'm going to take a look at that asap.

Thanks for all the help,

Matt

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## sarnold

Mine only pushes about 52 deg C or so under a heavy load, so I'd say 88 is a little excessive.  But I have a pretty massive heatsink with a 36 CFM fan w/ variable speed control.

The above is with the fan at half-max rpm (about 3600).  If I crank it all the way up to 7000 rpm (very noisy) I can take it down to about 48 deg C.  The most I ever pushed (with a cheesy little case with no airflow) was about 60.

I think the AMD max was about 90 last I checked, but others have said anything above 75 is way too much.  It does pay to have a decent CPU cooler, a good power supply, and good airflow.  If you have that, you shouldn't even need any extra case fans.  But I guess if you have a hot video card, a couple of big fast hard disks, and a CD burner, it starts to get a little warm in there...

If you haven't seen it yet (in your over-clocking hardware searching) there's a place with nice cooling gear at 2cooltek:

http://www.2cooltek.com/

Check the online store.  He's just a geeky guy in Florida, and sometimes ya gotta support fellow geeks (plus, he has some things the big places don't have).

Steve

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## Zarathustra[H]

 *sarnold wrote:*   

> Mine only pushes about 52 deg C or so under a heavy load, so I'd say 88 is a little excessive.  But I have a pretty massive heatsink with a 36 CFM fan w/ variable speed control....
> 
> Steve

 

Yeah..  I have some pretty decent cooling, but my computer is VERY loud.  I have a Swiftech MC462 copper heatsink with a 7000rpm 80mm Delta fan on top of it.

I think my current problems stem from that I dont really overclock anymore, so I decided to crank down the fan by switchng the 12v and 5v lines going into it, cutting its speed to approx 40% of what it used to be.  This worked well for a good long while, but apparently not anymore.

I also have two case fans that were really loud.  Sunon I believe.  I did the same 12 -> 5v conversion on them.  My two 100gig 7200rpm WD hd's are what I suspect bring up the heat and the noise level now.

You are right about the vid card too.  My GF3 seems to get almost as hot as the good ole Gforce 256's got when you pushed them.  Too baad, cause the GF2's were nice and cool.   Gotta get my hands on one of those GF FX's though  :Wink:   But that will be after I graduate and get going on my  Dually Opteron system  :Wink:   (When I can afford it that is)  I wonder how actively the Gentoo project will support AMD's x86-64 standard.

Does software actually have to be programmed specifically to be 64bit, or is it a compiler switch?

Anyway...  I have to run.  I'm thinking of just getting one of those volcano 8 fans.  They are way quiter than my current fan, not too expensive, yet still do a great job...

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt

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## rac

If the cooling discussion is going to go on much longer, how about taking it to the Hardware forum?

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## sarnold

That sounds fine; do I start a new thread, or can you move all or a portion over to the Hardware forum?

I wasn't planning on expounding much more on hardware/cooling issues (unless someone asks) but I've gone through quite a bit of mucking around with different options (cases, fans, drive coolers, etc).  And it sounds like Zarathustra has too...

Any more interest?

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## henke

The loudest component in my computer right now is the PSU. The fan noise is driving me crazy! :twisted: :Shocked:   :Crying or Very sad:  I'm thinking about getting a Nexus NX-3000 PSU. 

If you want to cool your cpu without going deaf check out http://www.silentpcreview.com

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## Zarathustra[H]

 *sarnold wrote:*   

> That sounds fine; do I start a new thread, or can you move all or a portion over to the Hardware forum?
> 
> I wasn't planning on expounding much more on hardware/cooling issues (unless someone asks) but I've gone through quite a bit of mucking around with different options (cases, fans, drive coolers, etc).  And it sounds like Zarathustra has too...
> 
> Any more interest?

 

Awesome  I fried my Geforce 3 hand had to buy a new vid card.  Just got my new GF4 TI4200 8x AGP.   It takes FOREVER for this thing to switch video modes, so going to tty by ctrl-alt-f* is out of the question.

Anyhow...

Boosting the fan back up to the old speed worked fine, and KDE3.1 is compiling now  :Smile:   I fear this is going to take a while...  And I was hoping to squeeze in some counter-strike...   Guess I'm just going to ahve to go to the bars instead  :Wink:   Oh well  :Wink: 

So  What quiet-ish heatsink do you people recommend for an Athlon XP 1800+ ?   This thing I have is ridiculously loud, and I can't stand it anymore...

Thanks,

Matt

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## chatgris

As a tip to anyone who's having trouble with cooling...

Try taking your heatsink off of the CPU and blowing out any dust...  My laptop was just shutting down and feeling very hot until I opened it up and blew the dust out of the heatsink =)

I know it sounds simple, but it's been the cause of 90% of my cooling problems (the other 10% was a dead fan).

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## The Ennead

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> So  What quiet-ish heatsink do you people recommend for an Athlon XP 1800+ ?   This thing I have is ridiculously loud, and I can't stand it anymore...
> 
> Thanks,
> ...

 

Thermalright slk-800 without a doubt. It ain't cheap but it is the best. Combine it with your favourite fan and you're sorted. My preference is for deltas but since they aren't quiet i'd have to suggest either ys-tech or papst.

The best round-up I know of is this one

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?s=9783052d1f95bfd6b13ff2e52719581e&threadid=276

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## sarnold

I've got the Alpha heatsink with a 35 CFM Delta and the Vantec Nexus panel.  The Ennead's right; the Delta's aren't quiet at full speed (about 7000 rpm) but the panel has a variable speed controller (plus temperature probes and USB/firewire connectors) that really helps quiet things down.  And you can still crank it up if you have to.

The quietest power supplies I've ever (not) heard are by PC Power & Cooling.  They're not cheap, but I can't think of anything better (or quieter).  They have some other stuff, but their power supplies are top-notch.

Case design is also a factor, depending on drive bay position/number of drives, cable routing, and venting.  I had one narrow little ATX case that hardly had any airflow at all with a few SCSI/floppy ribbon cables in it.  I sold it to a windows guy, along with a marginal motherboard.  And as mentioned above, cleaning out the dust bunnies is good too (eg, under the drive coolers).

After several iterations of my main box (various cases and other cooling devices) I've come to several conclusions:

good airflow is better than lots of fans (you can actually make it worse with too many fans in the wrong places)

quiet is better than loud (what?)

In trying to stay both cool and quiet, I now use:

round cables instead of flat ones

the slim little drive coolers that bolt under the drive instead of the bay-cooler type

quality low-speed case fans (eg, Nidec)

With good airflow, you shouldn't need more than one stealth-type case fan (either front or back), a decent power supply, and a good CPU cooler (all of them low-rpm, or with a fan controller).  Chipset fans can be replaced with good heatsinks, and there are good stealth-type GPU coolers.   The best assortment of cooling stuff I've found is the 2CoolTek guy.

Basically, good airflow is better than lots of screaming fans, especially if you can avoid hotspots.  Extra temperature probes can come in handy...

Oh, and if you have sensors on the motherboard, don't forget to emerge the lm_sensors package and run sensors_detect (maybe more than once).  You also need the kernel i2c modules for this.

Once you get the right modules loaded, the right proc entries are created, and the sensor module in gkrellm works without mucking around with sensord.  Score another one for gentoo...

Steve

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## The Ennead

sarnold is correct. (although I tend to go for good airflow and lots of screaming fans  :Laughing:  )There is also a great article about general cooling here

http://www.systemcooling.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=66

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