Quake3World

I am really proud of myself today and quite excited I went out and bought a new psu, two fans, a can of compressed air, thermal compound, and some cotton buds. I've cleaned and fitted everything, and not only is my pc stable and not rebooting, ( so far anyway, but I don't see any reason why it should), but my idle cpu socket temp is 45C and has been for the last hour, and case temperature 27C. \o/

None of the gear I bought is a big name like you guys would go for, but it works. The psu is 550w called 'EZ Cool', not expensive, has two fans on it (one for drawing air out facing inside the pc towards the cpu cooler) plus the standard exhaust fan, and the thermal compound and one fan is by akasa. That fan which I used for the side cover is 2,500rpm and seems fairly quiet. Well I've had a deskfan blowing into the computer for the last year so I can't notice any difference really. The thermal compound is meant to take temps down by as much as 9C, it's silver based so very much like AS5 would work I imagine. The other fan is a no name bog standard black fan. Both fans are 80mm. I can really feel the air being pushed out by the psu exhaust fan and it's cool too. My old psu hardly moved any air and was really hot.

I sprayed the inside with compressed air to clean shitloads of dust. Unscrewed the fan from the heatsink and cleared massive globs of dust then sprayed it. Removed the old psu; took the heatsink off the cpu, cleaned the bottom of it and the cpu core with proponol and cotton buds, dried off with a lint free cloth, and then spread a thin layer of compound. I did get a bit of compound around the edge but it's hard to clean it off without disturbing the main spread. Should be ok though. Never had a front fan before so I finally made use of the holding bracket that's there for one. I thought putting back all the leads for the new psu would be difficult but it was easy. Here's a bunch of pics I took as I went along for anyone interested ( I'm sure you're not )


http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/New%20psu.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/psu%20box.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... mpound.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... %20air.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/gutted.jpg

front fan:
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... akefan.jpg

side fan ( lost the grille, gotta buy one tomorrow before I lose some fingers) :
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... intake.jpg


http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... nkfins.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... atsink.jpg

http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... tsink2.jpg

Just cleaned cpu:
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... %20cpu.jpg
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... 20cpu2.jpg

small drop of compound:
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ ... hermal.jpg

Spread ( amateur style!)
http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/spread.jpg

Done!

Here's a screenie from MBM5. Wow, I was getting between 60 and 72 before. Quite a difference really and this is on a cheaply upgraded system.

[lvlshot]http://freespace.virgin.net/roman.five/ScreenShot145.jpg[/lvlshot]

Thats a 2000+ right? I have one with a Palomino core and it runs at 37C idle and 52C on max load.

damn that's still hot. what's the def core voltage of that cpu?

good job old chap!

but i guess if that psu was all you could afford. this would have been my choice. http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com/produc ... show=TC1KW

Yeah toxic, XP2000+. I dunno , maybe your pc has better cooling.

I dunno prince, I didn't think it was that hot considering I don't have super cooling in my pc? Apart from a couple of intake fans, the cpu only has a bog standard coolermaster fan and heatsink. From what I've read over the months, the people that spend more money, have lots of fans, ultra cooling like zalmans and the like over their cpu seem to get down to mid to late 30's. I honestly thought I'd be getting mid 50's today, so 44 is a surprise to me.
Not sure of the voltage, I think 1.75/1.80.
Shadd, that psu looks really good but I'm happy with the results I've got so far. This psu only cost £35 ($61). I just bought what I could today without ordering anything online.

nice work, drummeh!

just razzin ya drummy. no way i'd buy that 1000W psu.

Thanks juggy.

Shadd, I didn't even know psu's went up to 1K. Is it no good then?

oh i'm sure it's good. maybe if you had some waterpumps a gazzilion neon lights and dual video cards.

not meant for simple nerds like us.

Heh. Speaking of neon lights, I had a hard time in pcworld today finding an ordinary but good fan that actually didn't have fancy lights on them. Sod the lights, I just wanted a cool, working pc. :icon26:

DRuM wrote:Yeah toxic, XP2000+. I dunno , maybe your pc has better cooling.

I have a stock 300 watt PSU and a Vulcano 9 HSF. My case is closed.

Hmm, no idea then. Maybe the vulcano makes a bigger difference from my coolermaster.

But what did you do to change from 52C ide to 37C with what seems to be the same system? >>


http://www.quake3world.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/029761.html

My old Gigabyte GA-7VAXP's capacitors were leaking, it was showing me 75C temps and crashing under extreme load (UT2K4 specifically) so I bought an Asus A7N-X and sold the Gigabyte for $40 to some guy. Just by switching to the Asus my temps went down.

My motherboard is asus A7V8X. I would put it down to your vulcano hsf. Vulcanos are meant to be pretty powerful aren't they?

DRuM wrote:My motherboard is asus A7V8X. I would put it down to your vulcano hsf. Vulcanos are meant to be pretty powerful aren't they?

The Volcanoes are also usually loud and annoying.

Yeah, I heard that about volcanoes. But maybe thats the tradeoff for getting lower temps. Anyway, under load ( playing q3 at the moment) my temps go to 53C and is stable at that. I guess that's pretty acceptable.

yea drum, that is.. no worries about that at all.

Tormentius wrote:

DRuM wrote:My motherboard is asus A7V8X. I would put it down to your vulcano hsf. Vulcanos are meant to be pretty powerful aren't they?

The Volcanoes are also usually loud and annoying.

mines running at less than 3000rpm, its a lot quieter than the stock fan on my 1.6ghz p4.

AmIdYfReAk wrote:yea drum, that is.. no worries about that at all.

good to hear :icon14:

Hey Drum, did your computer randomly reboot before you bought a new PSU?

I had the same problem with my computer, went down and bought an Antek 350W PSU and fixed it up. Problem with brand-name computers is that they tend to use cheap PSUs causing problems in the near future.

ToxicBug wrote: mines running at less than 3000rpm, its a lot quieter than the stock fan on my 1.6ghz p4.

At normal rpm those fans are deafening...I had one.

Captain Mazda wrote:Hey Drum, did your computer randomly reboot before you bought a new PSU?

I had the same problem with my computer, went down and bought an Antek 350W PSU and fixed it up. Problem with brand-name computers is that they tend to use cheap PSUs causing problems in the near future.

Yeah, I'm guessing from my little knowledge of psu's that it was possibly fluctuating voltages. My pc isn't a brand name one it was custom put together for me about 3 years ago. Tbh, I've been running it pretty much 24/7 for that time so after 3 years it's no biggie to replace a psu. I would agree that something like an antec would be better for longevity, and I was intending to do a full upgrade last year to include a reputable name like that, but, well, I didn't so I did a quick upgrade today instead.

i think alot depends on the spread of the compound combined with what you're using as a compound. ive had 2 xp cpus, a 1700 and a 2400 using stock amd fan from cpus but with copper coolmaster base ($20 for hsf combo?) and arctic silver on both combined with 1 case fan and the 2 psu fans. never had idle temps over 44C even during hottest summer months, and pc was always on 3rd floor of house.

psu and cpu cooling is what i think you want to pay the most attention to. maybe try reseating and applying less compound. you don't need a lot. i dunno, everytime i've messed with the seating of a cpu i've had to do it more than once to get the temps i was looking for. i've got the same fans and hsf i described above though oc'd to 2600 right now and am idling at 39C. i think you can drop at least another 8C off those temps.

edit: also have a p3 1.2 in a closet i'm using as a server oc'd to 1.4 with just psu fans in case on stock amd hsf from 1700 idling at 26C. took me about 4 tries to get it seated right.