Advice needed for cooling this heat-disaster PC down a bit?

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jul 2011
Posts
36,681
Location
In acme's chair.
Hi guys, so my PC is set up like this at the moment with a 200MM and a 120MM intake at the front, and a 120MM exhaust, and 240MM push/pull AIO exhausting out of the top.

xEJGYXn.png


Any suggestions as to how I could improve this?

I run Folding@Home the GPU's are at 100% load. They have Sapphire Tri-X coolers which dump hot air into the case.

In this heat my GPU's are sitting at 94*C (#0) and 77*C (#1) and my CPU is sitting at 70*C because of the heat generated by the GPU's, and it nudges 90*C if I stress it to 100% with Prime Blend while the GPU's are running.

The fans I currently have are a total hodge podge, theres a cheapy Xigmatek in the drive bays, a cheapy Corsair exhaust fan at the back, the upper-most radiator fans are Akasa Venom Vipers, the lower ones are an old H60V2 AIO fan which looks like an SP120 only gray, and a Scythe slimline (to clear the RAM) and the 200MM is an Antec BigBoy 200 which only runs at the slowest setting.

Is there much to be gained by retiring the whole lot and replacing with a matching set of better fans? Should I completely reverse the setup and have the top and rear as intakes, and the front exhausting?

Hmmm...
 
Get more air in there. I don’t know if changing the rads to the front will give you anything.

if it runs that hot check your air flow from the front fans. If you’re front panel is solid it will restrict fresh air coming in.

you maybe can try bringing air in through the tap Rads and get a quite powerful rear fan going to extract the heat.

tbh your step up is pretty standard. Failing the above - leave your case open. :)
 
Any chance of mounting an exhaust fan on the case side panel over the GPUs?

You could then put a piece of cardboard horizontally to divide the inner volume just above the GPUs. They get fed cold air from the 200mm intake and the side exhaust pulls the hot air out. The divider stops hot air from the GPUs getting near the CPU cooler etc.

How are your fans controlled?
 
Any chance of mounting an exhaust fan on the case side panel over the GPUs?

You could then put a piece of cardboard horizontally to divide the inner volume just above the GPUs. They get fed cold air from the 200mm intake and the side exhaust pulls the hot air out. The divider stops hot air from the GPUs getting near the CPU cooler etc.

How are your fans controlled?

I have a windowed side panel on this 600T, when things get really bad I just remove it completely and run with the side of the case open. You used to be able to get a side panel insert which was mesh and allowed you to mount FOUR fans on the side panel, so I might see if I can get one of those...

Then I could try front, top, and rear as intakes, and four exhaust fans on the side. That would be novel... It would be like a space heater! :D

A divider is a good idea, I hadn't thought of that. I'll mull that over.

They aren't really controlled at all. Some of them are plugged straight into the motherboard 3 pin headers or powered straight from molex adapters, some are plugged into the cases integrated fan controller which is whacked all the way up to max.


Get more air in there. I don’t know if changing the rads to the front will give you anything.

if it runs that hot check your air flow from the front fans. If you’re front panel is solid it will restrict fresh air coming in.

you maybe can try bringing air in through the tap Rads and get a quite powerful rear fan going to extract the heat.

tbh your step up is pretty standard. Failing the above - leave your case open. :)


Front panel is mesh with filters. Maybe the intake fans dont have enough static pressure to overcome that? Its quite possible because one of the intake fans is just a cheapy, and the other is the Antec, but it only works on the slow setting, so it doesn't spin very fast.

Might try flipping the fans around at the top, but I didn't think a single 120MM exhaust fan would cut it?

I do sometimes leave the case open when things get bad! Haha
 
Look at replacing high rpm fans with slower, higher flow rate ones to avoid turbulence inside the case?

The multi fan side panel sounds like a plan.

Its just seeing if I can actually find one! :p

I have removed the side panel window now, so I have a side panel with a big hole in. It looks OK actually.
 
Do you actually need push/pull on the aio? Could be that those fans are too powerfull and are "pulling" all your intake air straight up meaning it doesn't actually flow over the GPUs?

Does the bigboy not work on higher speeds? If so may just be worth replacing that with a 120mm or 140mm - probably flow more air.

Arctic P12 / P14 are decent cheap fans if you are looking at replacements - although if replacing all of them it may be cheaper to replace the case!
 
Do you actually need push/pull on the aio? Could be that those fans are too powerfull and are "pulling" all your intake air straight up meaning it doesn't actually flow over the GPUs?

Does the bigboy not work on higher speeds? If so may just be worth replacing that with a 120mm or 140mm - probably flow more air.

Arctic P12 / P14 are decent cheap fans if you are looking at replacements - although if replacing all of them it may be cheaper to replace the case!

Probably not, I just had two spare fans kicking about so I put them on.

The bigboy is broken. I removed the three speed controller to try and wire it into my fan controller, it didn't work, so now its just on the slowest speed forever.

I was looking at the P12's funnily enough!

I think the case is fine for airflow, at least it looks like it should be? I recon its just the fans / configuration that need changing.
 
It looks very dusty in there, giving it a good clean would probably help.

It isn't dusty in the places where it matters. Heatsinks, fan blades, and radiator are all clear of dust.

Rigged up another exhaust fan as a test... Might flip it around the other way so its an intake.

T6blb2F.jpg
 
Flipped it around and the top GPU has decreased by about 3 degrees. Thatll do for now while I think about buying fans... :p

axPiTow.png
 
Last edited:
I think you'd see some improvement moving that hdd cage up to the 5 1/4 bay. Then a good fan on the front intake to draw air under the gpus
 
Hi guys, so my PC is set up like this at the moment with a 200MM and a 120MM intake at the front, and a 120MM exhaust, and 240MM push/pull AIO exhausting out of the top.

xEJGYXn.png


Any suggestions as to how I could improve this?

I run Folding@Home the GPU's are at 100% load. They have Sapphire Tri-X coolers which dump hot air into the case.

In this heat my GPU's are sitting at 94*C (#0) and 77*C (#1) and my CPU is sitting at 70*C because of the heat generated by the GPU's, and it nudges 90*C if I stress it to 100% with Prime Blend while the GPU's are running.

The fans I currently have are a total hodge podge, theres a cheapy Xigmatek in the drive bays, a cheapy Corsair exhaust fan at the back, the upper-most radiator fans are Akasa Venom Vipers, the lower ones are an old H60V2 AIO fan which looks like an SP120 only gray, and a Scythe slimline (to clear the RAM) and the 200MM is an Antec BigBoy 200 which only runs at the slowest setting.

Is there much to be gained by retiring the whole lot and replacing with a matching set of better fans? Should I completely reverse the setup and have the top and rear as intakes, and the front exhausting?

Hmmm...

Have your aoi at the front. I think that would be a good start :) Gpus can go higher with heat than cpus. Have your aoi on the upper two thirds and then a seperate fan underneath blowing on the gpu.

ideally getting rid of two gpus and replace with one too.
Cpu is getting heat from two gpus, even one isn't ideal with cpu cooler above it,move the cpu cooler.
 
I cant put my AIO at the front. Theres no mounting points and no space for me to make them, without cutting up the case with a dremel. Not sure the hoses would reach either! :( :p
 
Thsts
I cant put my AIO at the front. Theres no mounting points and no space for me to make them, without cutting up the case with a dremel. Not sure the hoses would reach either! :( :p
That's a shame. I've seen tests before where it was found having the aio in the front to be usually better. Mmm
 
Surely the AIO at the front would dump even more hot air onto the GPUs and VRMs? Sure the CPU itself would be better, but everything else would get hotter.

The bottom left 3rd of your system looks almost completely isolated from airflow, with little space to let any air out. Can you put the hard drive tray at the top? It may seem daft, but it's the GPUs that are pumping out most the heat, so need the cool air circulating, the hard drives at the top would block flow there too, but it may allow for a better flow overall, going from bottom right to top lef, rather than top right to top left at the moment.

Then if you can get/fit a little 90mm fan at the bottom against the empty PCI slots, you could perhaps try and get more exhaust going there. Maybe try moving the system further away from that back wall too, allow the air to escape a bit more easily (probably not an issue, but may help).
 
Back
Top Bottom