heat problems

[Gunny04]

my room is about 92 Degrees F where my computer is, with my 2 comp fans maxed the computer is doing 55-60+ idle..... and no matter what I am doing, it will randomly dead lock and there is nothing I can do but cut the power, is there any way to prevent this? Cheers, Gunny

[ctjoyce]

Yes. First off get higher CFM case fans. Secondly change your CPU cooler to a stronger heatsink (Zalman is what I recomend.) Another thing you can do is see if you can tidy up the cables in the case (use braids / sprial wrap, or just wire them behind the mother board like many people do). Along with cleaning up the cables get round cables for all your IDE and Floppy drives.

The tidying alone should bring your temps down atleast 1C if not more (depending on your level of clutter to begin with).

If you change your CPU heatsink use Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste (works wonders over the standird paste you get in the box).

Another thing you can do with fans is rig them in front of your case. Almost every case has an intake of some sort in the front, so take apart yours, and see what you can do. I did this on a friends stock dell and brought his load temp down almost 5C, and ontop of that it now acts as a ghetto hard drive cooler.

One last thing that I find with many computers with better graphics cards is that there seemse to be alot of heat that just sits at the bottom of the case. Solution would be to get one of the PCI slot fans to suck out all of that stale air.

If by chance you want to get really professional, find one of the websights that offer custom windows (if you dont have a windowed case), and have them cut a blow hole in the window. Ive noticed that mine will actually bring my temps down (about 1~2C) since its sucking the hot air off my northbridge and my RAM. Another pro mod that you can do is cut a blow hole in the top of your case to get rid of the hot air put in the case by the PSU and the IDE divices you may have. People I know who have done this have told me that if done right, it can look really nice and help get rid of alot of the stale air in the case bringing the ambient down 4C and the CPU down about 1C.

Oh and one really simple thing you can do is put it on the floor (near an AC vent if you have centeral air) or by any other cooling source, as this sometimes helps a tad, but dont put it too near anything that might "sufficate" it (if you know what I mean).

Hope this helps

~CTJoyce

[Gunny04]

Well I cant upgrade cooling or cut holes, but the side of case is off with these temps, and a fan near doesnt help and the wires arent causing any problems, HP actually did one thing right there.... and the fans are dust free.... But I am assuming on my budget, I basically have to deal with em? Cheers, Gunny

[Fozzer]

An interesting fact for me is that I always build my computers in "Desktop" cases...!
This means that the motherboard and processor are horizontal, and all the individual cards are vertical in their slots.
This allows the heat generated to be dispersed throughout the case with various sucker/blower fans strategically placed, and not adding to the the heat of the object positioned above it, as in the case of "Tower" cases.... ....!
The worst sufferer in a Tower case is the power supply which collects all the heat from the objects below it... ...!
My Desktop power supply, processor, graphics card, etc disperse their heat independent of each other... ...!

...you know it makes sense... ... ...!
LOL...!

Paul...The Desktop* enthusiast... ...!

* ...with a little help from my secretary... ... ... ...!