OK...now I'm mad...

[GeeFizzleDizzle]

I just bought a new case...a Coolermaster Centurion 5...and after transferring everything over to it my case and GPU temperatures have actually increased.

My HDD temperature (27 degrees C idle) and my CPU temperature (32 degrees C idle) are pretty much the same as they were in my old case (a Chenming Dragon) but my case temp has gone from an idle of approx. 30 degrees C to an idle temp of approx. 36 degrees C and my GPU (a 7600GT XXX Edition) has gone from an idle of approx. 50 degrees C to an idle temp of 56 degrees C.

I have an 80mm lower front intake fan blowing over the HDD, a 120mm rear exhaust fan, the PSU fan exhaust and an 80mm intake fan on the side blowing into the CPU. The ambient room temperature is approx. 75 degrees F.

I've cleaned up the cables about as much as I can in this case and really don't know what to do next.

Please help.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's probably a good thing to test a system-build at controlled room-values of 70F, 75F, and 80F (get out the handkerchief) -- respectively. All temperatures would rise linearly with increases in room values.

That being said -- I built a Xmas system for my brother with a Centurion 531 case. Right away, and before he got the package, I could see things needed to be done to the case. So I replaced the front 80mm fan with a 120mm fan. For noise considerations, it still wasn't "balanced" to my satisfaction after he took possession from Santa.

The intake fan-speed was 1,600 rpms, the exhaust (120mm also) was nearly 2,000 rpms. The correct approach to cooling such a system would be to pressurize the case, duct the motherboard, and force air through the CPU fan and duct seams so it exits the exhaust fan. You'd want to have enough pressure to feed the PSU vents, also.

Right now, his system -- built on my "slightly used" 3.0C Northwood processor -- shows 45C to 47C at full load. When it was in my ducted system, it load temps never exceeded 43C.

The side-panel fan may not help much, either. All the vents in the Centurion side-panel would bleed air in both directions, and the warm air in the midtower case mixes with the colder air, increasing case temperature, and therefore increasing CPU temperature above what it would be if heatsink air were immediately exhausted from the rear.

Bro is going fishing in the Sierras next week, and the arrangement requires me to replace his heatsink (XP-120) with an SI-120 and duct his motherboard while he's putting trout in the cooler. I expect that 117F load temperature to drop quite a bit.

It seems like a nice case, but I can see all sorts of opportunities to improve from "poor cooling performance" to "fair" or better. My idea -- put some LED lights inside, cover the side-panel vent-holes and blow-hole with Lexan, replace the intake and exhaust fans with 120x25mm jobs, and even -- duct the motherboard between the graphics card and PSU. You can find some good articles on ducting at the overclockers.com web-site.

The ducts I've made use a combination of Lexan (for looks and "transparency") and foam art-board (Michael's Arts and Crafts, 2'x3' panel for $6).

 

[BonzaiDuck]

PS

Look into a top-notch AGP or PCI-E (whatever you have) -- cooler. Heatpipes are good. Zalman makes a smallish copper heatsink cooler (XF 700 or 900 something) which is supposed to be tops for the high-end PCI-E cards. I use a Zalman ZM80-D double-heatpipe cooler form my FX5950 card.

The temps on the FX5950, measured at the the heatsink and right next to the GPU, maybe top out at 104F or 40C at full load. Idle is always around 36C. The nVidia chipset page of graphics "properties" exploits a temperature monitor feature and a sensor on the AGP card, which is maybe 2C above my front-panel readout from the tape-on sensor.

Also -- you can extend a mobo duct over a graphics card so that the combination of CPU intake and case exhaust pulls more air over the graphics card. With a heatpipe cooler, this would only make things better.

 

[GeeFizzleDizzle]

Thanks for the ideas, Bonzai.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Get an NV Silencer for your GPU...

If you're using the stock case fans, get something with more airflow. The Coolermaster ones are meant to be quiet, so they don't push much air.

 

[GeeFizzleDizzle]

Originally posted by: Spicedaddy
Get an NV Silencer for your GPU...

If you're using the stock case fans, get something with more airflow. The Coolermaster ones are meant to be quiet, so they don't push much air.

I was planning on doing both of those things as soon as I can get some more cash together.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yeah -- now that I remember, that particular Centurion 531 case DID come with a 120mm fan in the front intake. I've reworked so many cases, it gets confusing at my age.

That Coolermaster 120mm fan only topped out at something like 1,200 to 1,500 rpm if I recall correctly. For the most part, any fan spinning faster will show more CFMs, so it was causing the pressure inside the case to drop.

We replaced it with another 120mm fan that would push more air than the exhaust fan.

The problem with midtower cases lies in the simple fact that you cannot as easily mitigate noise while boosting CFMs using two 120mm intake fans, unless you modify the case bottom, and either raise the midtower off the floor with coasters or build a base for it that chambers air through sound-deadened fans into the case bottom. With a full-tower like the Coolermaster Stacker, you can have two intake fans in front. I don't have a Stacker, but I have a full-tower case, and I only have to spin my front fans at 1,800 rpm to put some real pressure in that case.

For the ducting, it has a real impact. For example, without the duct, my mobo temperature was around 85F at 70F-room. With the duct, it dropped to something between 79 and 82F. And I'm not sure that this sort of drop in mobo temp due to ducting has a linear effect on CPU temperature. After all, without the duct, you're recirculating air through the cooler that has been warmed already.