CPU gets too hot!

[yf]

I have 5 HD, 4 raptors raid-0 and secondery 500gb, so one cage will be full anyway

dont worry your little head

explanation?!...

[justpassingthrough]

YF that case will be perfect for you, don't worry your little head. I have done some extensive looking for my next case, and I have yet to find something that works for our needs better than that.

@ miltestpilot: The idea behind placeing the PSU at the bottom of the case is that the PSU is one of the hottest componants in your case. When its running full blast, it can generate a lot of heat. Placeing it at the bottom of the case keeps that heat away from the processer. Also if you look at the silverstone again you will find that the hard drives are in 2 3 drive racks. For someone like YF who has 4 raptors this is perfect because he can stagger them two to each bay, and with a 120mm fan cooling each bay there is ample cooling.

There is a reason that that case has been used twice by Max PC for their dream rig, and was given case of the year twice.

Cheers
Cameron

for that kind of money and does not come with a power supply it better make my breakfast and be dead silent. All they did at the top was use the side intake method and moved it to the top. 2 120mm fans is rediculous unless your some nut that overclocks way past what normal people might run over-clocked.

I think its overpriced and one of the reasons is the endorsement. There are fancy sports cars that get endorsements/awards from tech mags and sites all the time and I would not touch them either because many of them don't work like they are portrayed to for the cost they want.

Im not saying its a bad tower but for the price I would not want to experiment and find out. I would rather put the cash into a high yeild, superior PSU that will run 1/2 as hot or less because of its design. Heat rises, not falls, so moving the PSU to the bottom makes no sense. I think its a design marketing gimic but I'm no expert. With a very efficient PSU that tower may make more sense but I think the same cooling can be done for 1/2 the price.

His biggest issue is the drives and the room needed for the cables. Perhaps that tower would be better for that, I dont know, but I do know that as long as he has airflow across the drives and a clear path to expel it, the inside temp will drop reducing the CPU significantly. Thats something he can try with his current tower along with seating the zalman with a smaller amount of paste. .. and place the tower in a place where it can actually breathe and not pump hot air back into it.

Lets be realistic here, It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see whats going on. Even I can see it and Im just an old fighter pilot from the Vietnam era. His rear fans pump heat out and where he has the tower slid into is enclosed and has no breathing room. Heat rises so it goes up to the top of the tower and gets sucked right back in by those top fans. That, on top of the wiring blocking the Rators from breathing is causing his problem. That 300+ solution is quite expensive when he can experiment with what he has and configure it correctly. I would even cut the silly hard sheth off those PSU wires and get rid of the ridgid cable issue because they are keeping him from being able to tuck them away flat somewhere. A program like Speedfan can reverse the fans at the top (I think) and that would expel the air instead of blow hot in. Worse case he can reverse the + and - wires by cut and splice and have them run the other way.

His problems are better solved by working with what he has and realizing how to put the inside of a tower together correctly/better. If in that process the tower size is an issue or other problems cant be solved, then consider a large server type tower because they are designed for hot drives like the Raptor with pleanty of space between the drives for airflow that does not require a rediculous number of fans to produce.

In the case of the silverstone tower all the heat from the drives will be sucked up past the CPU by the 120mm fans and the 2 90's so I just dont see where using that makes much difference than having the PSU at the top. Ill bet those Raptors generate twice the heat of the PSU.

The more I look at it I think the silverstone an overpriced gimic designed to appeal to the kiddies

He would be better off learning how to design a tower layout for airflow and if needed in the end, buy a good, professionally designed SERVER tower for those Raptors instead of a craming it into a 300 dollar kiddie box. His issue is different from most because of the drives he runs. Server towers were made for those issues, not some plex windowed show boat kiddie-mobile. I think the tower is rediculous for his application.

Those Raptors need at least 1 slot free between each one of them so they can breath, at minumum. Stacking them the way he has, has created a radiating heat brick and with the other drives stacked, blocked any airflow from the front. That, along with the wiring, is whats killing his temps. If anything hes going to kill the drives like that and if he uses that silverstone junk and cant get the air between the drives by proper separation, its done him no good spending 300+ bucks.

he needs a good server tower. Ill bet he can get a good one for 150 or less with no PSU


Thats just my opinion, I may be wrong.

[justpassingthrough]

dont worry your little head

explanation?!...

I think he was making a funny about the icon you use for your name here

[justpassingthrough]

@yf

Here is what NickN had me do to show me my tower layout was a mess:


Open the side of the tower and place a small fan blowing into it and see where the temp sits after that. If it reduces it significantly you need to redesign the layout or get the right server tower for those drives and all the devices you run.

When I did that I found out the cables and layout I was using was causing my temps to run almost 10c higher than they should.

I don

[ctjoyce]

The reason that the Silverstone and LianLi cases are $100 ~ 400 is due to the fact that they use very high end materials, and most of the operation is done by hand. And yes it is a little flashey, but even the smaller names souch as HotHardware, AnandTech and Tom's Hardware have given it a rave review. So yes there is a lot of hype about it, but the truth is that it just preforms like no other, and is one of the coolest (temp wise) cases on the market.

Do I agree that he needs to learn proper cable tidying, and airflow, yes. But do I say that something like the silverstone is a better learning platform than his current case? Yes, as there is more room inside the case in which to work. A server rack wouldn't be a bad idea ithor, but you can't put a ATX motherboard into a server rack. You could put it on an extirnal test station, but then you deal with dust, and 5 hard drives sitting on your floor / desk. A rack is a good suggestion, but in reality it dosn't work for him without rebuilding.

Adressing the other statement you had made about heat riseing, yes you are right it does. However in the silverstone, and in Lian Li V1000 / 2000 cases the PSU is seperated and ventilated in its own enclosure at the bottom of the case, this keeping all generated heat out of the rest of the case. The Antec P180 takes this approach too, but dosn't do the job quite as well. Also since both cases are designed for two PSUs to be mounted, you have ample room to stash any extra cabeling.

Finally when you say remove the cable sleeve on the PSU, for the love of god don't. Sleveing is just nylon mesh keeping your cables together, it keeps your case cleaner then not having them. It dosn't make them rigid at all.

Cheers
Cameron

[justpassingthrough]

That hard cover nylon sleeving keeps him from being able to tuck them away. Your sleeves on your PSU cables appear are very flexible, his are not. I know, I had that same crap on mine and cut it off to tuck the wires away on the side and the top. What a difference. I could not shove those hard-arse cable sleves in a single empty slot because they would not flex enough. I am all for round sheth to enable better airflow but some of this stuff they push is just gimic garbage as i found out.



I said a tower, not a rack server.


I would rather work with 150 dollar el cheapo full sever tower that has the bays and side vents than spend 300 on one that is no where near the room

[ctjoyce]

This one is for YF.

When you recieve your new case this is what you should do. Go out to your local hardware store for a bunch (25+) of those Zip Ties, and a roll of electrical tape.

1st: Figure out exactly how many Molex, GPU, and SATA connectors you are actually going to need. Then remove the rest.

2nd: Screw in your motherboard screws, then run your 4 pin connnector for your CPU up the motherboard tray to the top of the case. Do the same with your 24pin ATX connector, but insted of going all the way to the top, make a right angle turn, about where you think the 24Pin ATX slot will be. Also you may want to run one of set of Molex to the top of the case to power your fans, and DVD drive(s). Use the tape to keep these wires in place while you install your motherboard. Plug in everything, then pull the cables from the bottom of the case, you want a littel bit of slack, but not too much. When you go to install those fans, they will each have a wire hanging from them. Plug them all together, then into one of the Moles from the PSU. Use zip ties to keep things tidy and neat. You may also want to use tape to tape the fan cables to the top of the case to keep them from hanging into your Zalman.

3rd: Clean your Zalman. Use paper towels and a citrus based (not orange smelling, but something like goo gone)cleaner to clean the bottom of the Zalman. Polish it until its all coppery and nice. Do the same to the CPU but don't use the citrus cleaner, it will wreak it. Apply a dolup of AS5 about the size of a pea onto the processer. Then use an old credit card or hotel room key to spread the paste evenly across the surface of the processer. Then install the clean Zalman.

4th: Plug in your SATA drives, and run the cabeling up through the floor of the case to the motherboard. Again pull any slack back into the bottom of the case.

5th: Install your IDE cable. If you have a round cable you really don't need to do anything to hide it, but in any event, zip tieing it to the drive cage isn't a bad idea to get it out of the way.

6th: Install the rest of your cards, RAM, etc, useing the same method of runing minimal amount of cable in the case. Any that you cant get rid of, zip tie in a bundle, and try to hide it in or behind your drive cage.

7th: Get that beast some Air. You have it crammed in that cubby hole there, let her breath. Wether you place it on your desk like I do, or just a larger piece of floor space it dosn't matter, she needs to breath.

8th: Turn her on, and make sure everything is plugged in and working.

Once you get into it, you will start finding ways to get rid of even more wireing, and hide even more wireing. When you open up speed fan you will notice that your temps have made quite a drop, and you will enjoy the new low levels.

Cheers
Cameron

[ctjoyce]

That hard cover nylon sleeving keeps him from being able to tuck them away. Your sleeves on your PSU cables appear are very flexible, his are not. I know, I had that same crap on mine and cut it off to tuck the wires away on the side and the top. What a difference. I could not shove those hard-arse cable sleves in a single empty slot because they would not flex enough. I am all for round sheth to enable better airflow but some of this stuff they push is just gimic garbage as i found out.



I said a tower, not a rack server.


I would rather work with 150 dollar el cheapo full sever tower that has the bays and side vents than spend 300 on one that is no where near the room

Go look at the mesurements of that, and the mesurements of say a CHENMING case. They are more or less the same. Only difference is the Silverstone has a much higher quality of build, and stacks its drives 3 side by side, and the Chenming is 6 vertically. Those are the major differnces.

Cheers
Cameron

[justpassingthrough]

http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appinst ... l_wcap.pdf

For AMD they say to use a dot and not a line. In neither case they say to NOT spread it and allow the HSF to do it. He said he used 5 lines. That writeup says to use 1 very thin one. I would listen to the engineers that designed and developed the compound.

I did not read the arctic silver instructions for that originally (what I get for not reading) and had to be pointed to that from someone else.

I'm not trying to say anyone is wrong, just repeating what worked on mine.

Never use paper towels. They leave microscopic lint on the surfaces. That is also posted in that writeup and something I was also told never to do by the electrical engineer that use to be a member here.



@ ctjoyce. keep in mind you are not running 5 hard drives + others. The number of power cables coming off your PSU and the type of covering plus the distance from the PSU to the drives allows you to do what you do in your tower. His tower has those Raptors stacked like a brick right behind the PSU and with the number of cables he is working with off that power supply and the thick nylon coat on them, I doubt he can get them any better. I know that coating because mine had the same. You can forget about bending them more than once in a very wide loop if you are lucky. The silverstone repeats the same issue as far as I can see with the PSU at the bottom.

He needs a new tower that will allow the drives to be installed correctly with space between them and the PSU cables properly retained and out of the way. If the wires are loose and have no coating and they are flat against the back of the tower or in a open bay, thats all that matters and the rest is for silly visual mod-hype unless they are being run in front of an air duct or vent.



As long as air can get between the drives and the vents are there with or without fans that can be added, be it a 600 dollar case or a 100, thats all that matters although I do agree material and construction plays into a better unit. There are many brands of towers out there. Knowing what you need in the way of space and figuring out the right grill layout (location for fans) for the system and also the construction being solid is the key to buying a tower, not a brand name.

There are allot of off-brands that are made very solid and provide all the needed elements that do not come with a 100% markup on the name.

[yf]

Thank you all! and I mean it! I will live and lern and I will soon let you know the results.

thanks again
YF

[Ivan]

Part 1: some comments

2nd: Screw in your motherboard screws, then run your 4 pin connnector for your CPU up the motherboard tray to the top of the case. Do the same with your 24pin ATX connector, but insted of going all the way to the top, make a right angle turn, about where you think the 24Pin ATX slot will be. Also you may want to run one of set of Molex to the top of the case to power your fans, and DVD drive(s). Use the tape to keep these wires in place while you install your motherboard. Plug in everything, then pull the cables from the bottom of the case, you want a littel bit of slack, but not too much. When you go to install those fans, they will each have a wire hanging from them. Plug them all together, then into one of the Moles from the PSU. Use zip ties to keep things tidy and neat. You may also want to use tape to tape the fan cables to the top of the case to keep them from hanging into your Zalman.

Good suggestion... problem is that most cables are designed from top mouning the PSU... and too short to run them behind the board. Second minor problem is that you might get heat damage if they are directly behind the processor or the cooled chipset part

8th: Turn her on, and make sure everything is plugged in and working.

You frogot step 0: write down the exact order of drives and where they are plugged in... NT class windows uses drives by connector ID, not by name / partition type

Part 2: my setup
(yes it needs to be cleaned inside...)
Some parts look messy but it has NEVER overheated in this setup, even with close to 30C ambient temps...
The dirt on the chassis is from an intake hole

Case type: Aopen H700B (first model with USB1.1 front and no dedicated side intake, current ones have USB2.0 + Firewire on the front, a dedicated side intake and slightly better fitting plastic)


For the next machine, i'll get a Coolermaster Stacker... and put the optional lawnmower fan in it for sure

[ctjoyce]

Part 1: some comments

Good suggestion... problem is that most cables are designed from top mouning the PSU... and too short to run them behind the board. Second minor problem is that you might get heat damage if they are directly behind the processor or the cooled chipset part

The heat damage is true, but most of the newer PSUs, esp the highher voltage ones designed for server towers, or for gamers usually have enough head room, from his last picture he should have enough in the TJ07.

You frogot step 0: write down the exact order of drives and where they are plugged in... NT class windows uses drives by connector ID, not by name / partition type

Actually that isn't that big of a deal, you can switch that around in the BIOS.

Cheers
Cameron

[justpassingthrough]

Are you sure you can mix up the cables on an established RAID-0 4 disk array without issues?

[ctjoyce]

RAID you cannot. I forgot that he was running a RAID array.

YF Label your drives and cables.

Cheers
Cameron

[yf]

you know, I just finish to build a pc for my sister, she needs it for quick books, the rig was the 6600, 2gb corsair, 1 raptor, 1 backup 250gb, I used the intel DG965WH mobo. and that raptor works so fast, that I realy start thinking about drooping the "hot" raid and use only 1 raptor and a  my secondery 500 gb, and avoid all that truble.

but......but....will I loose any FPS in gaming?