Fan/cooling upgrade

[JB Rekit]

The front fan on my XCLIO A380BK has been out for about a month and I have had a shop blower blowing air through that opening, and then the cheap little puller fan on the back of the case just went out. This is my second complete build and is a little over 2 yrs old.

I was planning to go with the Rexflo250mm (front replacement-I think) and put the Delta AFB1212GHE-CF00 for a huge upgrade on the back of the case.

Looking through a lot of the cooling threads, I was wondering if it would be strongly recommended to upgrade the stock cooling on any of my other hardware? From my searches, it also looks like I should put a new application of thermal compound on as well. Here is a list of my components:

Processor: i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz (stock heat sink and fan)
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer (250mm fan on the side of the case blows on it)
Video Card: HIS H485FM512H Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 (stock single fan)
Memory: ADATA XPG Gaming Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (250mm fan on side of case)


I plan to upgrade to a SSD since I did that to my work computer and really like it as well as upgrade to 16g of memory. I can wait to do that until I get my fans/coolers set up properly though. I'll still order it all at the same time.


As far as use is concerned, it is for all intents and purposes a work computer, plus the media center for the entire house using sageTV. (I have it is set up with dropbox and logmein and can do everything my computer at the office can do.)

I don't play games, but do run several high resource programs at once, most significant being the AutoCAD-Autodesk design suite and the adobe CS5 suite. I will usually have firefox open as well as several MS office 2010 programs at the same time as well as SageTV running in the background.


I've also been reading more about overclocking and would like to experiment a little with that. I am not as worried about parts wearing out prematurely, but do need to maintain an extremely stable system, so I doubt I'll ever get too extreme with it.

This computer is kept in a closet (with air conditioning vent) next to the study so fan noise won't be an issue.

Thanks for the suggestions!

John

 

[Matt77]

Hmm,
I'd say a GOOD heatsink, some thermal paste, the fans you mentioned, and a GPU cooler if it doesn't have one would be the best option

 

[PP Mguire]

You want an equal amount of air going in that is going out. So having a high CFM fan is wasted is the other side isn't pushing enough air. IMO if I was you I would get 2 Gentle Typhoons or 2 Sythe Kaze fans instead of that Delta.

If you need an extremely stable system then overclocking is not advised. Even with the most stable overclock on prime for 24 hours something could still go wrong with an overclock. If the stock fan is still working fine, then I would leave it.

If you want 16GB of RAM then get 2 8GB sticks at 1600mhz. The P55 platform doesn't do too good with 4 sticks running and can cause lock ups here and there.

 

[JB Rekit]

Thanks for the replies!

PP Mguire - Obviously you are intending to use the Scythe in a push pull configuration, but are you thinking it would be best to put one in the side blowing a higher velocity at the MB and the other sucking the air out of the back, or would you put the pusher on the front? I still have a working 250mm fan that supposedly puts out 150cfm that I could have in the other location. My intuition says, even though they are the same CFM, that I'd be better off putting higher velocity Scythe on the side of the case blowing the fast moving air right over the MB, but I really haven't tinkered at all with cooling and done any temp tests with different configurations so I'm completely aware that sometimes the obvious isn't always what works best.

And going over the CFM figures, do you think it would be worth doing the 240cfm delta on the back given that I put the 130cfm scythe blowing in from the side and still use the 150 (probably closer to 100cfm large 250mm fan blowing in from the front over my HDD's? Mathematically that seems to be the best balance of air in to air out.

Side note - regardless of the route I go, I think I'll probably end up hooking up one of my power supplies from an old computer to run just the fans so I don't end up pushing my 650w corsair power supply too hard and inadvertently causing other issues...

Thanks again for the help. I've been monitoring my CPU temp a lot the last day (sitting at 45*c right now just surfing), but I'm about to have to get some work taken care of for the morning, so I'll see what the upper limits get to. Still have the shop blower on it, so it has a significant amount of air moving through the case right now, so I doubt it will get too bad.

 

[PP Mguire]

I was saying buy 2, put one in the front, one in the back. Fans don't pull enough to blow a 650w Corsair. You would need to be running too many GPUs to do that.

Delta's are just noise makers and even though they have a ton of CFM it really isn't that necessary.

 

[JB Rekit]

Ok, sounds fine to me. And I have the probe II voltage alarm up with the temps so I have no problem keeping it clean looking w/o the other power supply. You aren't recommending doing away with the 250mm fan on the side are you? I understand wanting a reasonable balance for air in/out which was the only reason I asked about the delta since the extra 1XXCFM from the 250mm throws the balance off a bit (I'm just not sure what is considered reasonable for something like this). It has seemed like I've had a slight up-tick in performance since having the squirrel cage blower shoving air right through the case (mainly when using handbrake or clown while having cad and/or photoshop and way to many firefox windows open - that's the main time I'll consistently notice the system start to lag). It would also seem beneficial to blow some cool air right from side onto the mobo since the fan from the front will be right behind a stack of 6 HDD's. I know those need cooling too, and given that many HD's, the air will probably be a bit warmer after passing through them though.

 

[PP Mguire]

Lets start from scratch. What does your computer consist of, what are your drives in the front, and what case do you have?
I have 7 drives in my server in the front of a Thermaltake V9 with a standard Sythe Kaze in the front blowing air over the drives into the PC with a CM cheapo in the back blowing air out (I'm gonna say 65cfm tops). I have no top fan (I broke it smashing it with my fist on accident) and no fan on the side. I have an Intel Q8200 with the stock fan and hot DDR2 and this consists of my server. It is inside a coat closet with no vent and the max my CPU gets with this setup while encoding on all 4 cores is about 65c.

Reason I'm asking is because I think you either need to reconsider your HSF setup, your overclock (if you have one), need to reseat your HSF, or simply dust out the whole thing. Dust is my servers worst nightmare so I have 2 filters in the front that I clean monthly. If you have a stock Intel fan by any chance you need to clean it periodically because it can clog up very easily.

 

[Matt77]

Jesus christ that's a lot of dust

 

[JB Rekit]

Case is: XCLIO A380BK full tower Newegg.com - XCLIO A380BK Fully Black SECC 1.0mm thickness ATX Full Tower Computer Case

And apparently I can't count, just clicked on my computer and I have 7- 2tb media drives and 1 500gb drive for the OS which I'll be changing to a SSD since I've loved the one changed to on my office computer.

Processor: i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz (stock heat sink and fan)
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer (250mm fan on the side of the case blows on it)
Video Card: HIS H485FM512H Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 (stock single fan cooler)
Memory: ADATA XPG Gaming Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (250mm fan on side of case)

I know I probably don't clean my system often enough (probably just quarterly at best), but the one at home doesn't get dirty anywhere near as quickly as my office computer with the same case. Mostly due to it being in a conditioned unused closet with merv 16 media filters in a spray foamed/sealed envelope house. When I do clean it, I usually just take the whole case into the garage and blow out any dust in the case and then take off the GPU to blow out its fins and have better access to the CPU heat sink. I plan to get some more thermal compound and re-seat the heat sink. I'll also check out how flat it looks. I had never heard of lapping when I put this together, but I'll check that it seems flat and smooth.

As far as overclocking, I haven't played with any manual settings, but have had the bios set on turbo-auto for about a year now. It seems extremely mild and conservative and may not even really be considered overclocking in comparison to what I've read about others doing to their systems.

Anything else you can think of that might help? And it has a bluray and DVD burner.

I appreciate the patience and I really do enjoy learning about all this and understanding why something works is nearly as important to me as it just working.

 

[PP Mguire]

Dear lord, the only fan you should need to replace is the one in the back with a decent fan like the Gentle Typhoon. Those huge fans actually push a lot of air.

With your current setup I don't see any reason why you would heat issues. Honestly, if it doesn't go over 75c on the CPU load then you should be fine. Especially if you aren't overclocking. I wouldn't lap either. It's only best on older Core 2 based CPUs like the Q6600.

Other than keeping it clean that's it really. Reseat, make sure none of the push pins are broke so the heatsink has good contact, apply the TIM right (grain of rice size in the center of the IHS, no more), and replace the back fan.