advice: Machine for a hot room

[cesaro2]

I'm looking on some reccomendations for a comp for a fairly hot room. Ambient temperature in the room will be around 80-90F. I've currently got an AMD 1.2 on a gigabyte mobo with a cooler master aero 7.

Anytime I get some heavy CPU usage for 20-30 minutes machine will shut down. I'm not too particular about AMD/Intel, but I just need something will perform in those kind of ambient temperatures reliably.

Thoughts or opinions? (Besides crank up the A/C?)

Thanks,
=Cesaro

 

[airfoil]

More information needed:

Do you have any case fans? Adding a couple of them may be the easy solution.
What is the PSU, how many fans does it come with?
What other hardware do you have, and in what case?

 

[cesaro2]

Currently have two 90mm fans (one intake, one exhaust) with a 2 fan enermax 350 PS. Case is a generic mid tower, only other components are a SB Audigy 2, Radeon 9600, 100mbit NIC, 2 HD's and a DVDRW.

I'm looking for a faster machine anyways, so none of that stuff really needs to stick around for the next iteration.

 

[sniperruff]

you can get a barton or something and then set it to 100/133mhz FSB. surely it'd be slower but i think it'd be cool as hell. i guess if you have a mobo that allows you to lower the FSB by a bit it'd work too.

 

[airfoil]

My bad, I thought you were looking for ways & means to cool that rig down.

Its really no contest, what you're looking at is an A64 CPU - if you want cool & quiet, given those ambient temps.

 

[airfoil]

I really need to fix this double post problem...

IE works fine, Firefox just sits there for a long time..I wait..and see double posts.

 

[cesaro2]

No prob.... the A64's run cooler than the previous AMD's? Yeah I'm looking for an upgrade anyway and wanted to get something would behave a little bit better given those temperatures....

 

[airfoil]

When it comes to cool, AMD leads by a huge margin. The Intel P4 Prescotts are better known as room heaters - consume too much power and end up generating roo much heat.

An A64 will run 15C cooler is way better in terms of muscle and is cost effective to boot.

 

[NokiaDude]

For a room THAT hot, I'd get a Koolance watercooled case. Air cooling is unefficent at those temperatures. Think of the air cooled VW's!

 

[dodgybob]

If water cooling seems a step to far at least get a new case with 2x 120mm fans, one at the front and one at the rear. You don't want stagnant air building up inside when it's pretty warm to start with. Also make sure you're careful with your cabling to cause the minimum obstructions to the air flow possible.

You might be able to get just as good cooling with a case with more smaller fans but with 120mm you should be able to shift air relatively quietly.

On that note if you go A64 might I suggest the xp120 heatsink if it will fit your chosen board?

Again with a 120mm fan it should be able to cool your cpu effectively in those conditions and be relatively quiet.

Hell get a psu with a 120mm fan on it whilst you're on

Sod intel/amd fanboyism, 120mm is where it's at!

 

[phisrow]

You might, if necessary, consider obtaining a mobile A64 and underclocking it rather hard. You can get power consumption alarmingly low that way. I rather pity your hard disks, though.

 

[NokiaDude]

The AMD64 runs much much cooler than any other CPU besides the Penitum-M. If you get a socket 929 3200+ and put a thermaltake silent boost on it, it'll run okay in a 90F room. Seriously, think about watercooling. Even a Zalman Reserator @ $200 is a good WC setup.

 

[WobbleWobble]

What are the temperatures for your CPU and system?

 

[SlitheryDee]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
What are the reported temperatures for your CPU and system?

Yes, what temp does your bios/MB monitor read.

 

[cubby1223]

Well, if you don't want to upgrade much, can your board take an Athlon XP 2000+? Might be able to find one used for cheap here, make sure it's the t-bred core, not the palomino! Big difference. Should be much cooler than a t-bird 1.2GHz (and faster!). Toms Hardware has a chart in their cpu article history somewhere with a graph of watt dissapation for all Athlon XPs from t-bird to barton.

And, the cool & quiet feature of the Athlon 64's kick in when the system is idle - thus the feature would be turned off during the heavy cpu usage, and negate the benefits of upgrading in your situation, am I wrong?

 

[l Xes l]

i'd say go for WC in such hot environment... or place the computer by a window if there is one...

 

[Doctorweir]

Or Peltier cooling...unless the room is extremely humid...

 

[mindwreck]

wow u consider 80-90F hot. My rooms about 85-90F (so used to it i can keep my windows closed) and my sempron runs at 54Cload

When i had my 1ghz athlon thunderbird oc'ed to 1.3, it also ran around 40-45C with the slk6+. And i didn't even have a cpu fan on it. I made a duct out of cardboard and used my exhast fan for airflow(sorta like how Dell does their cooling)

Only thing I'm guessing is get a bigger heatsink or a tune up your case flow.

EDIT: i just remembered anoother thing i did. The thundbird athlons could be undervolted a lot. Its stock voltage is 1.7v. I was about to undervolt it to 1.5v and it was still 100% stable. it dropped my temps a lot.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

centrino + micro Atx skt 479 board...now thats cool. but expensive

if you have the money id say this is much better....they are designed to run in laptops and on a battery. my dads cnetrino laptop is a 1.6Ghz (533bus) even at full speed and good bit of load the cooling fan never hardly comes on

these things are as cold as ice when in comes to temperatures, intels best CPU in my mind

 

[Cares]

Maybe go for water cooling OR an Intel chip?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

35w Barton-Mobile+NF7-s should do 3200+ speed on 1.5-1.6v tops, with a nice Thermalright and remain stable under extended heavy load even in that hotbox enviroment. A skt754 sempr0n setup should be speedy and cool enough too. A 1.4v Sempr0n is a great choice IMO.

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Is the room always kept at that temperature for a reason? (experiments which require climate control for example) Cause if it is I'd suggest placing the PC itself in a cool closet outside the room, and only placing a monitor/keyboard/mouse in the room itself.

If not: Try if you can keep it cool enough with a few extra fans, otherwise use watercooling.

 

[fuzzynavel]

Get yourslef a small fridge....put your Case in a big plastic bag and close it...then throw it in the fridge.....should be cool now!

 

[airfoil]

Originally posted by: fuzzynavel
Get yourslef a small fridge....put your Case in a big plastic bag and close it...then throw it in the fridge.....should be cool now!

Brilliant, I suppose that is what you've done with your rig.

I'm not sure what the brouhaha is all about - there are countries where the ambient temperature is 100F or more, and air conditioning is non existent. PCs obviously run in those environments without much fuss.

Cesaro2, just get an A64 based rig, unless you can lay more cash down for a Intel Dothan based rig.