How much do Ambient Temps matter?

[BKKSW]

Hello -

I sure would appreciate some advice.

First let me tell you my requirements.

1. I run in ambient temps of up to 40c, sometimes a bit more.

2. I process images for hours at a time, often keeping both cores running at 80%+

3. On board RAID 5 of 3tb.

4. Dual Video cards.

My Machine:

Lian Li VB1000 (or something like that), it's a large server case I purchased from Frozencpu.com a few years ago already modified for water cooling. It has a large triple radiator mounted on top with 3 120mm fans and 3/8" fittings. It holds 12 3.5" internal HDD and about 10 5.25" drive bays.

Intel XBX Motherboard with a x6700 2.66 Core 2 Duo at stock speeds.

4 gigs of RAM

(2) Nvidia 7950gt video cards, passively (air) cooled.

Promise Tech EX8350 RAID card running (8) 500gig Hitachi SATA II drives.

(1) Raptor 150g HDD (system)
(2) Raptor 76g HDD's (scratch and work)
(1) 1tb Hitachi HDD (for backup images of all my work)

FIREWIRE and USB aux cards from Adaptech.

Triple radiator with 3/8 fittings, (3) 120mm fans, mounted on top of my case.

Dual bay (5.25) reservoir

Swifttech Pump (the big one)

Danger Den CPU block.

(1) 120mm fan running air across the drive bays.
(1) rear 120mm fan for upper area
(1) Crudely mounted 120mm fan to blow across both video card heatsinks

That should do it for the system. The water cooling goes from the pump output to the CPU block input, from the CPU block output to the radiator input, and from the radiator output to the reservoir input, and from the reservoir output to the pump input.

I see "T-line" mentioned a lot, but I don't know what this is and what it's function is. My system moves A LOT of water, basically like a garden hose turned on half way.. no bubbles in the line, the output into the reservoir is hardy and almost violent.

All the fans are run by a serial USB controlled Zephyrus controller. They're set for a minimum of 35% at idle to a max of 90% at 100% CPU use. At 50% CPU use they're flowing at 65%.

I have no issues with my system, it's running fine, no errors, no overheating that I know of.

I'm thinking about overclocking this system but I'm not sure it's a good idea. The reason I went to water cooling in the first place (this is my first and only water cooling experience) is because I don't like to work in air conditioned spaces and my ambient temps run from 30c-42c year round.. usually about 36c-39c during working hours.

Presently the SMART tests show my hard drives at an average temp of 51c over their life.. and Speedfan (pulling the info from my BIOS because I have no external temp sensor installed) confirms this showing HD0, HD1, HD1, HD3 from 50-54c virtually all the time.

Speedfan is also showing my CORE 0 and CORE 1 and CPU temps running from 55 at idle to 79-81c at full bore.

Nvidias Ntune utility show the video cards at 52c and up to 60c at full bore.

PCpowerandcooling 850watt PS

All the tests I read on cooling shows the CPU temps from 25-60c.. but ambient temps at 72f.. quite a bit lower than where I run. So far I've been running my system at these temps (Vista x64 OS btw) for almost two years.. no issues at all. No errors.. a remarkably stable system that only needs to reboot for the monthly OS updates. The system gets used 10-12 hours daily and during its' "sleep" time will spend a few more hours backing up images to the internal RAID, internal 1tb drive, an external NAS drives over the gigalan.

So I suppose my questions are:

1. Are the temps I'm running at considered "normal" or "reasonable" for my ambient temps?

2. Would overclocking be recommended considering my ambient temps and current water cooling configuration?

3. What is a T-line?

4. Since my video cards are running from 52-60c with the current passive heat sinks and crudely mounted 120mm fan.. (I fully intended to order GPU blocks and tie them into the system but when I saw the temps with the temp fan.. left it alone) Would there by anything to gain/lose from a system standpoint if I added GPU blocks for both fo them?

5. Any tips or recommendations for getting my system to run cooler? The only things I can think of involve replacing the radiator and CPU block with ones that have 1/2" fittings to increase the flow.. and after reading some of the reviews on the air cooled towers.. I've considered going totally air cooled.. but I'm not sure how that would work in my ambient temps.


Thanks for reading this obnoxiously long post and for any information you can provide. I wanted to list all the germane information.. if there's anything I left out please ask.

THank yo.


BKKSW

 

[Zepper]

Welcome to the AT forums.

I like to keep my CPU at 60C or less and case under 45C. So you'll need a super cooling system as your ambient is way too high and no air or water cooling system can produce device temps below ambient. PCs are designed to run comfortably in ambient temps that humans find comfortable (around 25C plus or minus a bit). I'd be very uncomfortable with HDD temps that high - will certainly shorten their lives - hope you have verified backups. Get some more air to them (the bottoms of the drives are generally the heat production areas) so maybe you'll need to find a way to space them out a bit more. If the fan grills are restrictive, cut them out or remove them. More powerful fans can help too and aren't expensive. My HDDs are currently at 33 and 34C - if I opened the door on my case, those would drop 3 deg or so. Yup, it's that restrictive...

re. your water cooling. I'm not really into that but perhaps your flow rate and/or radiator really isn't up to the ambient temps you're dealing with. You want a coolant reservoir of at least half a gallon for those conditions and the more the merrier. Standard WCing rigs are also designed for the same 25 deg plus/minus ambient - for worse, you may have to create your own and it may not be cheap.

Good luck!

.bh.

 

[zagood]

You should listen to your friend Zepper, he's a cool dude.

Like he said, HD temps are a bit high. Make sure the 120mm that's blowing at them actually has air going over them.

Your GPU temps are perfect. Don't worry about adding a block.

Your CPU load temps are really high. If they're that high on water, air is not an option for you. Overclocking will raise your temps, so if you do try it, run stability tests for at least 24 hours before doing any mission critical jobs on there. aigomorla may be able to make some suggestions that'll lower your temps...but I doubt there's much more you can do with ambient temps that high.

Is there any way you can install a window or portable air conditioning unit in that room? For the cost of a cheap window unit ($100-$150 + electricity) you'll be able to both get a lot more out of that system, and ensure longer life for your hardware.

-z

 

[MarcVenice]

He doesn't like working in a airconditioned room though Adding blocks to the gpu's would only make your CPU run hotter and since their temps are quite good allready I wouldn't even dream about it. Temps are within spec, but like zepper mentioned, HD temps are rather high, and high temps do shorten the lifespan of HD's. I think you need some liquid nitro oxygen to keep that pc of yours cool, especially if you want to overclock

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Zepper and Zagood are giving you all the advice you need.

I'm just curious: You say "you don't like to work in air-conditioned spaces. . . " Don't you sweat a lot? 80F is uncomfortable to me.

We're in So Cal. With or without the wildfires, during the warmer part of the year the house cools at night, and can be pushing 80F by noon when the outdoor temperature is heading past 95F. It is about then that we cut on the AC, or we otherwise set it to kick on at 78F any time during the day or night. These habits derive from our concern about power bills.

I'm running a Q6600 (B3) in a 680i motherboard ( a power-hog), with a four-drive RAID5 attached to a 3Ware 9650SE controller. I limit my RAID5 to four drives -- even considering only three -- because of power-bill considerations, although the 3Ware controller works well to spin down the drives during "Standby" and spin them up coming out of standby. Idle power consumption, as measured by UPS software, seems to be around 280W when the system is not in standby mode.

The system is over-clocked 25%, and I can keep my (2xORTHOS) load temperatures below 65C when the room ambient is approaching 80F -- using motherboard ducting and a very efficient heatpipe cooler. But I could never -- and would never -- run the system at room ambients above 85+F.

I've known people who feel comfortable in their homes with room-ambients above 80F, but I can't imagine anyone who feels comfortable at 100F unless they're in a sauna bath wearing a towel and looking to sweat out a lot of "bad metabolites." Do you shiver from hypothermia when you dive into an unheated swimming pool?

You must be some sort of real-world "X-Man."

 

[BKKSW]

Your comments about upgrading my wc system interest me..

Does the type of CPU block make much difference?

The 3/8" fittings concern me a bit.. Does anyone know if 1/2" fittings would be worth changing out a triple radiator and CPU block?

I currently have a dual 5.25" bay reservoir.. I have the room to cascade another dual bay to double the capacity, would this have much effect?

I think more powerful fans for the HDD's is a good idea. The one that's there is a a 120mm that came with the Lian Li case.. but I get the feeling it could move a lot more air. I think I'll change this out today and see temps for the drives come from it,.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: BKKSW

1. I run in ambient temps of up to 40c [104 degrees], sometimes a bit more.

Bwahahaha!

Where do you live?

Hades?

 

[BKKSW]

Some comments to everyone:

I have air conditioning and can cool the area off to any temperature I desire. The issue comes when I leave the space to go outdoors.. going from 72f and 40% humidity to 100f and 88% humidity is huge, I'll be soaked with sweat before I can make it down the elevators to the carpark. If the elevator takes too long I can find myself soaking before even leaving my floor. But.. ever since I just let me body adapt to the heat.. a fan is the most I'll use.. then I can move around the city without being soaking wet with sweat. I don't mind the temperature extremes, but having soaking wet clothes for the duration of your activities sucks.

Electricity is also expensive. Running the AC in just my workroom.. runs about $450 a month. It doesn't seem to matter if I cool to 72, 80, or 90.. strange systems they have here.

My APC software shows me using 300 watts at idle, 438 watts going full bore.. and that includes powering two 21.5" LCD's and running a 50" 1080p HDTV DLP. With 12 HDD's, two powerful GPU's, etc.. that seems about right? The RAID card spins down the (8) 500g Hitachi SATA II drives when not active, as do my NAS drives. The monitors, CPU, and other four drives spin down after five minutes of non-use..

I agree the GPU's seem well served by passive cooling helped out by the 120mm fan.. it's what made me think maybe an air cooled cooler for the CPU would work better than what I have? I'm not sure..

I've read about the electrically cooled CPU coolers.. a sort of refrigeration? I suppose that would be great for the CPU, but what about the rest of the system? Is there a large server class case that includes refrigeration?

So far this system is two years old and not a single failure/error on the HDD's, and no sign of instability at all. I agree heat (and power surges) as a computers worst enemy.. but so far nothing seems the worse for wear because of these temps. If I get three years from this system I'll be thrilled, and I see no reason at this time it won't go another year. Ideally I'd like my HDD's to last longer.. and transfer to a new system.. but when I bought my 500g drives they were $359.. now they're $89 on sale.. I figure in a year when I replace this system 1tb drives will be hovering about a hundred bucks.. so replacing them would seem prudent if only from a space economics pov.. I certainly would feel better about building my next system in a refrigerated case though..


Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated.

 

[BKKSW]

Almost forgot.. What is a "T-line?" Will it help prime the pump and get the flow going easier? I have a heck of a time getting the pump primed (pump on the bottom of the case, radiator on top), but once it catches some fluid.. then a few minutes later all the bubbles are gone.. and it's a solid strong stream. I wish this part could be easier. What happens: Usually I keep my system running 24/7, but sometimes I want to shut it down for a few weeks for vacation. When I do that I need to re-prime the pump.. and it's not easy. There's got to be a better way.

 

[Zepper]

BKKSW,

You need to edit the thread title (can be done here by editing your first post which makes the thread title and subtitle available for you to edit as well) to reflect the WCing upgrade project that the thread has morphed into. You want to attract those with WCing experience to help. Always make your thread title reflect the current thread subject. I have no personal WCing experience but I know enough to be dangerous... Good luck.

The above being said, with a decent size reservoir elevated a bit above the pump, why would you ever need to prime the pump unless perhaps you had to drain the system for some reason? Just make sure the system gets bled properly.

.bh.