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PSU fan helping or hurting?

H

Heliskier59

Junior Member
Gigabyte 7VAXP mobo with amd 2100+ cpu in large antec case with 120mm fans x2 (in front of drive bay and back) and enermax psu with fan. Zalman all copperHS directly under PSU 2nd fan. Temps aren't great... idle cpu at 58 load to mid 60's occasionally approaching 70 with system freeze. I jerry-rigged the psu so the fan would blow down into the case; the existing mounts on the antec case would have required me to mount the psu with the 2nd fan blowing up against the case top... My Zalman heat sink has a fan that is blowing heat up against the force of the psu fan blowing down on it. Could this create a turbulence that would greatly reduce the cooling effect of the case fans and heatsink?
 
I'd make the fan on the processor blow onto the heatsink. I'd also have the fan on the PSU, on the inside, pulling air in from the case so that it can vent out. Obviously, your temps are higher than they should be. Especially with getting lock-ups when it hits the higher temps. Make sure the front case fan is pulling air in, and the rear is venting air out. Having proper air flow inside the case is rather critical these days.

What are the room temps where the computer is??
 
air blowing down from the psu is hot exhast and thats not good for cooling. that fan is for sucking in hot air from the cpu and exhasting it through the psu and out the back
 
Room temp is around 25-28C I hate running the ac and getting huge e-bills. As for the psu fan, I was not aware that I could reverse the direction of it. How is that accomplished? I do, by the way, have the front grill fan sucking air in and the rear fan blowing it out. I also have several scsi devices with their damn flat ribbon cables that seem to fill up a good portion of the case...Maybe I should get rid of them (9 and 36gb cheetahs) especially since Microsoft XP does such a lousy job with scsi interface...Thanks for the input... any other ideas?
 
Manage the ribbons better. Tuck them out of the way and allow for better air flow. If you have an old PSU (the early ones had the blowing fans) time to get a new one that pulls air from the case instead of acting like a space heater for your CPU. I'd either get a better processor cooler (one with the fan blowing onto the heatsink) or reverse the fan on it. Maybe install a fan in the side of the case, to help get rid of some of that extra heat...

Even with everything inside my case, with the room temp in the range you're talking about, my processor is about 5-10C above that. Under load, it goes up another 5C (or so) but quickly drops back down when the load is done...
 
Thanks akira34; on the topic of psu... Is it really worth replacing just for the fan? If so, what is the QUIETEST psu in the 400+ watt range that you know of, that also has a good fan system? What if I just flip the psu so the fan is blowing into the case cover... As for the heatsink, the zalman copper has a fan that I could easily flip and blow ON the processor...In general, are the heatsinks fans suppose to operate that way, or is it just and individual thing that you need to tweek to find out? By the way, my case temp is 42 with a 20 to 25 degree gradient with the cpu. Is this a typical gradient, or do I need to reapply the thermal paste?
 
you do not want to reverse psu fan. it blows out for a reason, it heats air. u do not want psu heated air blowing down into your case. its probably that and possibly bad hs mounting that gets you such bad temps. one of my pc's has a pos amd hs with 80mm fan i swapped in running at low rpm in an antec case with fanbus lowering all fans speeds and still, the cpu runs at 45c or less
 
All new (or recent) PSU's have the fans blowing in the proper direction to not contribute to the temps inside the case. If you have an old, or off brand, PSU replace it with a new one that's made by one of the better makers. If that doesn't do enough, get a better (brand new) processor cooler with the fan pre-mounted. Pretty much every processor cooler I've seen has the fan blowing onto the heatsink to aid in the heat exchange.
 
I finallly got around to opening up my case again. I guess I was wrong in describing the orientation of my fans; the fan of the enermax 350W psu does not blow down on the processor, instead it draws up. Likewise, the large fan over my all copper zalman heatsink is blowing DOWN onto the heatsink. With my OPEN case antec my Athlonxp2100+ still idles at 59-60c with 63-65C full load. Is this then a heat sink issue? I thought I was very careful installing it, with a THIN layer of silver grease...Any ideas here?
 
any fans in the back/top of the case should be on exhaust. Those earlier athlons ran a little hot, but that's still hot. How's your wire management and what's your ambient temps?
 
Ambient temp around 26C
I do have 120mm fan on exhaust at top. Open case temp is still what concerns me. By wire management, what exactly are you referring to? Sure there are plenty of ribbons...I've tried to tuck them away as best as I can but frankly they really don't lend themselves to much contortion...
 
Well I finally found the problem!!! Seems that all the warning about applying too much thermal grease led me to apply too LITTLE. I was led to believe that an appropriate layer would be virtually invisible; I just cleaned off the cpu and heat sink and was a little more generous and now the cpu temps have dropped from 62 to 45C... go figure...
 
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