Hot computer in a hot room -- how do I cool it?

[zp2063]

I built a computer for my Grandpa to do video editing stuff with. He lives in FL and has no air conditioning in his computer room. His room is usually about 86 degrees and never below 80.

He has been experiencing a lot of crashes while rendering movies and/or burning them to disc. I was helping him when I noticed his CPU temps seemed kind of high (as measured by the Abit monitor).

The CPU idles at 109-110 F. Under full rendering load it reached 124.7 and then crashed. He pulled the three panels off the case and put a big fan next to it blowing air into the case right on the MB/CPU area. He started rendering again. This time it got to 132.8 before crashing. Just after the crash, he measured the ambient case temp with an external gauge with the fan blowing and it was at 89.9.

My first thought is to swap out his average CPU HS and fan for an XP-90c w/ a Tornado and add an 80MM tornado to the 1 free fan slot in the case. But, I wonder how much cooler I can make this thing with 86F room temps. I'd like to avoid water cooling, but if I need something cold in that case, it might be the only idea.

If anyone has experience with this, or any thoughts on my proposed solution, please comment.

Computer details:
-Antec SLK 1650B tower with a 120mm exhaust fan and "tunnel" vent over the CPU area and 350 PS (included)
-XP2900 Barton at 2.0 Ghz w/ decent (not great) aftermarket cooling
-1.5 GB of PC3200 @ 400 Mhz
-160GB Segate
-Radeon 9250

Thanks!

 

[imported_ST]

best thing u can do for computer and him, is to buy an air conditioner! 😛 living in FL with no AC!! Oo

 

[zp2063]

HAHA! Very true. Thing is he likes it that temp. His house has AC, but about 15 years ago he built an additional room where he keeps his computers. He never hooked AC up to it.

You do bring up a good point and one solution we talked about was putting AC into the room and he would just turn it on when he wants to render movies. However, I tend to think it would be easier and cheaper to cool the small space of the PC rather than the entire room.

 

[imported_ST]

the only problem is see is although u can get a better more efficient cooling in ur system, the hot air still has to go somewhere. if the ambient temperature is high, the exhaust of the computer will still be sucked back in, thus negating most of the gains. the other alternative of course is to upgrade to one of the newer 90mm processors that is much more efficient and utilizes less power (amd).

for my system (in sig), i often times just leave it on, play some games, and it's basically my heater during the winter (in CA)! 😉

 

[JEDIYoda]

Originally posted by: zp2063
I built a computer for my Grandpa to do video editing stuff with. He lives in FL and has no air conditioning in his computer room. His room is usually about 86 degrees and never below 80.

He has been experiencing a lot of crashes while rendering movies and/or burning them to disc. I was helping him when I noticed his CPU temps seemed kind of high (as measured by the Abit monitor).

The CPU idles at 109-110 F. Under full rendering load it reached 124.7 and then crashed. He pulled the three panels off the case and put a big fan next to it blowing air into the case right on the MB/CPU area. He started rendering again. This time it got to 132.8 before crashing. Just after the crash, he measured the ambient case temp with an external gauge with the fan blowing and it was at 89.9.

My first thought is to swap out his average CPU HS and fan for an XP-90c w/ a Tornado and add an 80MM tornado to the 1 free fan slot in the case. But, I wonder how much cooler I can make this thing with 86F room temps. I'd like to avoid water cooling, but if I need something cold in that case, it might be the only idea.

If anyone has experience with this, or any thoughts on my proposed solution, please comment.

Computer details:
-Antec SLK 1650B tower with a 120mm exhaust fan and "tunnel" vent over the CPU area and 350 PS (included)
-XP2900 Barton at 2.0 Ghz w/ decent (not great) aftermarket cooling
-1.5 GB of PC3200 @ 400 Mhz
-160GB Segate
-Radeon 9250

Thanks!

okay lets change some of these to celcius....
The CPU idles at 109-110 F(approx 43celcius). Under full rendering load it reached 124.7(51.5c)

actually those really are not bad temps considering......especially if you are using stock cooling.

If you did swap out and put in a different heatsink you really might lower the temps to say 1 or 2 celcius above room temp!!

You see the key is NOT ambient temp in the case.....thats not an issue...
The key is what the ambient temp is outside the case beauase thats where you are drawing your supposedly cool air from....

 

[Eureka]

Here's an idea... mod an airconditioning unit into your case!

Norm

 

[Lasthitlarry]

I don't have AC on and I live on the second floor apartment, so it stays around 80 F, and 5 hours of WoW my pc will hit 57 C and crash , unless I have a box fan on low in front of my computer.

It helps a bit, but if I had a nice system I would just turn on the AC.

....It's friggin November tho...

As for an AC unit for your computer, that is just dumb, it will cost a lot of money to set up, and your electricity bill will skyrocket.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda

Originally posted by: zp2063
I built a computer for my Grandpa to do video editing stuff with. He lives in FL and has no air conditioning in his computer room. His room is usually about 86 degrees and never below 80.

He has been experiencing a lot of crashes while rendering movies and/or burning them to disc. I was helping him when I noticed his CPU temps seemed kind of high (as measured by the Abit monitor).

The CPU idles at 109-110 F. Under full rendering load it reached 124.7 and then crashed. He pulled the three panels off the case and put a big fan next to it blowing air into the case right on the MB/CPU area. He started rendering again. This time it got to 132.8 before crashing. Just after the crash, he measured the ambient case temp with an external gauge with the fan blowing and it was at 89.9.

My first thought is to swap out his average CPU HS and fan for an XP-90c w/ a Tornado and add an 80MM tornado to the 1 free fan slot in the case. But, I wonder how much cooler I can make this thing with 86F room temps. I'd like to avoid water cooling, but if I need something cold in that case, it might be the only idea.

If anyone has experience with this, or any thoughts on my proposed solution, please comment.

Computer details:
-Antec SLK 1650B tower with a 120mm exhaust fan and "tunnel" vent over the CPU area and 350 PS (included)
-XP2900 Barton at 2.0 Ghz w/ decent (not great) aftermarket cooling
-1.5 GB of PC3200 @ 400 Mhz
-160GB Segate
-Radeon 9250

Thanks!

okay lets change some of these to celcius....
The CPU idles at 109-110 F(approx 43celcius). Under full rendering load it reached 124.7(51.5c)

actually those really are not bad temps considering......especially if you are using stock cooling.

If you did swap out and put in a different heatsink you really might lower the temps to say 1 or 2 celcius above room temp!!

You see the key is NOT ambient temp in the case.....thats not an issue...
The key is what the ambient temp is outside the case beauase thats where you are drawing your supposedly cool air from....

Exactly.

His temps are fine. If he is having stability issues, then the problem lies elsewhere.

-Kevin

 

[Pabster]

I envy anyone who could stand living with an ambient air temperature 80F or above. That's insane.

Of course, I keep everything tightly controlled year-round (65F, low humidity)

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: Pabster
I envy anyone who could stand living with an ambient air temperature 80F or above. That's insane.

Of course, I keep everything tightly controlled year-round (65F, low humidity)

You should come down to Texas . . . 😉

For a 2900 Barton 51.5 isn't bad at all, I remembered that I had a Socket A Barton that ran at 55C Load and was stable as hell . . . 86F Ambient isn't all that terrible either . . . my ambient room temp is around 75-80F (with AC on) and it doesn't have THAT much of an effect on my system temps . . . I've tried running my system with AC on high and on low and the different in temps was maybe 1-2C and only during idle. Load temps were almost identical. (This is on XP-90C with Delta so you should get similar results with XP-90C with tornado)

Even if ambient temps were say 60-65F, then CPU temps would drop probably only by 3 or 4 degrees or so . . . that is if you use an XP-90C with Tornado.

We had a cold front down here like last week and ambient temps were around 18-19C and my CPU temps dropped from 30C Idle to like 26C Idle and from 37C load to like 34C Load. So not a HUGE difference . . .