Computer Wiring Help and CPU temp help and a few other questions...

[darkscythe]

Well, I am looking for better cooling for my computer, it currently idle's at 36° w/ both sides off, and 38° with both sides on, I have a total of 5 case fans, and 1 vantec heatsink/fan. I'm also looking for advice on my wiring situation, does it look neat at all? any suggestions on how to help it? I took 3 pictures so you can get better idea, and what are suggestions about round cables?

I am also looking to add another hard drive to the computer, making it a total of 3 hard drives, 60gb as primary and 2x160gb as storage, do they sell IDE cables that can support 3 drives? or will I need to buy a longer IDE drive for the cd rom drive so I can drag it down the HDD decks.

Please advise and all suggestions and comments are thanked.

Pic w/o side cover on
Pic from other side of case showing what I have done thus far
Pic with side covers on

Thanks in advanced.

 

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by: darkscythe
Well, I am looking for better cooling for my computer, it currently idle's at 36° w/ both sides off, and 38° with both sides on, I have a total of 5 case fans, and 1 vantec heatsink/fan. I'm also looking for advice on my wiring situation, does it look neat at all? any suggestions on how to help it? I took 3 pictures so you can get better idea, and what are suggestions about round cables?

I am also looking to add another hard drive to the computer, making it a total of 3 hard drives, 60gb as primary and 2x160gb as storage, do they sell IDE cables that can support 3 drives? or will I need to buy a longer IDE drive for the cd rom drive so I can drag it down the HDD decks.

Please advise and all suggestions and comments are thanked.

Pic w/o side cover on
Pic from other side of case showing what I have done thus far
Pic with side covers on

Thanks in advanced.

First up, try to tuck the power cable bunch inbetween the psu and optical, or on top of optical. This will do almost nothing to help with temp, but will make your windowd side look better. Those ide cables could be an airflow problem. Perhaps some of the other folks around here have good suggestions for dealing with flat ribbon cables.

 

[Zim Hosein]

darkscythe, what is the ambient temp in the room that your rig is located?

 

[darkscythe]

Well, I'm off the college soon so the computer is temporarily in the living room till I get out, the temperate is about 72°-74°

 

[HardWarrior]

Originally posted by: Tiamat Perhaps some of the other folks around here have good suggestions for dealing with flat ribbon cables.

Yeah, replace the ribbons with rounded cables. They help with airflow and look SO much better.

 

[darkscythe]

Just spend time rewiring everything, so here are the after pictures




I probably will end up getting rounded cables down the line, thanks for the help everyone.

After 1

After 2

Look any better?

 

[nboy22]

Here's what I did with my wires. I routed them behind the PSU, then they route down in between the case side wall and the motherboard wall where the motherboard sits, then some come back around the other side where the optical drives are and just reach over and plug into the optical drives, for more of a visualization, here is a PIC . Anyways, as you can see, the ones going to the hard drives are actually partially UNDER the motherboard physically. I was kind of skeptical at this at first, but it works great, and then, I took all my wires, and used zip ties, a lot of click click clicking later and I had them all tied up, then I went to home depot and got some wire loom 3/4" and 1/2". the overall price for the wire loom was like 3-4 bucks, and it was WAY more than enough, you could probably do about 2 to 4 computers with all of the loom I got. Then I zip tied the loom on there and presto, that's what I have in the picture.. Took me about 3 hours of planning and execution, but it looks pretty! Also, it decreased my system temp by 10 degrees farenheit and the processor about 15 degrees farenheit.