gpu cooling

[Night Fox]

Ultra X-Blaster Black ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB, FireWire and Audio Ports at TigerDirect.com

This is my case. My graphics card gets the hottest because my intake fan is in front and the exhaust is in the back, way above the gpu, so little cool air gets pushed onto it. The temperatures are tolerable; it gets up to around 65c and its max is 125c (if I remember correctly).

Anyway, I wasn't really expecting to add additional cooling, but then my brother's external laptop pad/fan broke and he gave it to me and got another one. I fixed the fan, and carefully removed it from the pad. Its a 70mm that plugs into a USB port...I was figuring I could put it to use and attach it to the vent next to the gpu. and use a usb on the motherboard to power it. I don't know the exact specs of the fan. Would this do much for cooling the gpu?

What would be the best way to attach it to the vent? The corner holes don't like up with the vent in any way.


[Irrelevant: I removed an iPod charger from the AC power supply and plugged in the usb from the fan, and it ran...and it made me happy (I'm new to this )]

 

[Peter.Cort]

I'd recommend spending some money to upgrade the fans in the case to higher CFM (more air movement) fans. By moving more air it allows more of the heat from everything including the GPU to dissipate, even if it's not directly on the GPU. This would be a good move purely because they can be moved to any case that you get in the future and it's unlikely that a high quality fan you buy today will be obsolete in a year or so.

But in regards to your initial question, when you say the 'vent' do you mean the PCI brackets on the case? If so what you could do is take a dremel and carve out enough of the bracket so you can put some screws in, and put some rubber washers on either side of the bracket to prevent it from shaking and rattling which is increasingly annoying. The fans that they use in laptop coolers aren't the most powerful of fans, which I'm sure you're aware of, but i would venture a guess that it would decrease temps by about 5 degrees, maybe even more depending on your intake fans. Just remember that if you have more fans pushing air out than pulling air in then you won't see much in the way of improvements.


Another thing you could do its put an aftermarket cooling system on your GPU, but if it's the 9500gt I would say it's not really worth it.

 

[aspire]

max is 125c (if I remember correctly).

If anything is hitting 125C in your computer it would be melting...

 

[Trotter]

Yeah, 80C should be as high as you should ever let it get. Anything over that and you are cooking it.

Since your card doesn't vent to the outside you can rig up something to help pull the hot air out the area. I would remove the PCI slot covers and mount a fan over them, blowing out. If you have enough clearance you can put it inside, otherwise put it on the outside and runt he power cable in through one of the slots. Odds are you can get away with a 80mm. Just use zip ties to secure it. it will look ghetto but it will help.

You can also try to mount an intake fan on the side vent. That may take some modding to get the screws through if the holes aren't big enough. Again, a 80mm will be about all you can get away with. The good thing is that a couple of screws is enough to hold it

 

[patonb]

Actually, I think an exhaust on the side to suck out the hot gpu exhaust might work better.....

Or just sell your ase and buy a better cooled case. Even an Antec 300 will cool phenominally better.

 

[Night Fox]

Well my initial plan was to just put the fan on the side vent (pictures in link of first post) and have it blow some air onto the graphics card. I have one 120mm intake fan in the front, a 120mm exhaust in the back as well as the PSU above it. I think I have enough air coming out. I think I'll try using zip ties for now and see how that works.