Cooling my old(ish) pc.

[Moley]

Help! Cooling my old(ish) pc.

Right, I've been out of the loop for a while and I'm looking to see what I can do to improve the performance of my PC without spending a fortune on upgrades.

I have an Asus P4C-800e Deluxe Motherboard with a 3.2Gig HT "Prescott" processor, stock intel fan/heatsink. Socket 478 I believe

Graphics is a Sapphire Radeon 9600XT, stock fan.

My case has 2 (noisy) fans at the back extracting air, 4 hard disks (I may consolidate down to 2) and I use the machine for gaming.

I have no experience overclocking but I understand that this motherboard can overclock automatically. Problem is if I start turning options on it's not long before I start seeing 70-80 degrees Centrigrade temperatures!

I suspect that I can improve things by removing 2 HDs, clearing up the IDE cables (replace with rounded) and getting better heatsinks.

I would really appreciate some advice as I would like to get it right first time and as I only use the box for internet and gaming I'm not sure that I need to fork out on replacing the Mobo,Cpu and Gfx just yet!

Thanks

Jamie.

 

[smids]

Really - just don't use motherboard auto-overclocking. They simply just raise the Vcore (CPU voltage) much more than required and increase temps for very little speed increase. The HDU's aren't really causing too much, I can assure you. I have 5 in my case.

I would simply suggest this - replace the CPU heatsink with something good. XP90, Freezer Pro (choose the correct one for your socket). This is cheap and cost effective way of reducing noise and heat. Make sure you have an exhaust fan though - to remove excess heat (rather than just relying on the PSU).

 

[Moley]

Nice one - cheers smids. Looks like I'm going to swing for an arctic freezer or scythe ninja with a built on fan. Also going to swap my ide cables for rounded ones to improve airflow. Oh and a fan mounted inside the front of the case.

Thanks for the help!

J.

 

[Moley]

Time for a bump on this thread, because - I've finally got around to ordering and installing a new cooler!

I opted for the Arctic Freezer 4 Pro which I installed, got the Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound too.

Now there seems to be an improvement in Warcraft, I don't get jerkyness like I used to and certainly the fan is a lot quieter. I can also run with the side on the case - which I couldn't do before.

However the Asus utility that came with my motherboard still reports temp in the 55-60 centigrade range when idle. Now admittedly it doesn't hit 80 C under load any more, but am I right in thinking idle temps should drop too?

 

[Perfect_Chaos]

Time for a bump on this thread, because - I've finally got around to ordering and installing a new cooler!

I opted for the Arctic Freezer 4 Pro which I installed, got the Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound too.

Now there seems to be an improvement in Warcraft, I don't get jerkyness like I used to and certainly the fan is a lot quieter. I can also run with the side on the case - which I couldn't do before.

However the Asus utility that came with my motherboard still reports temp in the 55-60 centigrade range when idle. Now admittedly it doesn't hit 80 C under load any more, but am I right in thinking idle temps should drop too?

Make sure you have applied enough thermal paste, but obviously not too much.

Make sure the heatsink is making good contact with the CPU.

Make sure there is good airflow in the case, though with temps that high.. probably not this one.

it should be one of those

 

[Moley]

Make sure you have applied enough thermal paste, but obviously not too much.
Make sure the heatsink is making good contact with the CPU.
Make sure there is good airflow in the case, though with temps that high.. probably not this one.
it should be one of those

Looks like I may have applied too much paste or mounted poorly.
Working better now.

 

[Chris Beard]

What're your idel and load temps now?