Need cooling advice to start O/C. Please.
Been spending a lot of time researching, reading threads regarding which case fans and CPU coolers are the most effective and quiet.
Have been considering Vantec Stealth fans for the cases. Any good/bad reports?
The ones i am using at the moment are mostly Antec 80mm blue light.
1.For Northbridge cooling, i thought about Zalman NB47J. Supposed to be better than standard mobo ones. Somewhere i read you cannot use them if you have Onboard graphic's. No idea why as 2 of our boards are Asus P4S800-MX, with onboard graphic's, yet have a very small version of a fanless Chip cooler.
Also intend to mod the cases, where needed to put top exhaust fans in, possibly just 80mm.
2.Next looking at putting 92mm or 120mm in the front of some of the cases that can take it.
Mainly to get a bit more air in, to pressurise the case, to keep dust out.
Is this a good/bad idea???
3.Last but not least, the cooling of the Cpu's. Just when i thought i was onto something good, i read another thread to contradict my findings. With these i'm open to suggestions, bearing in mind they are all IntelP4's from 2.4Ghz to 3.2Ghz
In the threads i read, Papst and Panaflow seem to have a good rep. Sleeve type being the preference. Life would be so much easier if they made 2 types, noisy and quiet ones, lol.
The reason for doing the above are 2-fold. A - to make our room a bit quieter. B - To have a go at trying to do some overclocking. Even if we can't overclock, atleast it will be a bit more peaceful, lol.
We will also be getting siliceous Vantec noise dampeners and Vantec iceberq ddr heat spreaders.
Are we over doing it?????
All comments will be appreciated.
Thanks
Jon & Sally
Have been considering Vantec Stealth fans for the cases. Any good/bad reports?
The ones i am using at the moment are mostly Antec 80mm blue light.
1.For Northbridge cooling, i thought about Zalman NB47J. Supposed to be better than standard mobo ones. Somewhere i read you cannot use them if you have Onboard graphic's. No idea why as 2 of our boards are Asus P4S800-MX, with onboard graphic's, yet have a very small version of a fanless Chip cooler.
Also intend to mod the cases, where needed to put top exhaust fans in, possibly just 80mm.
2.Next looking at putting 92mm or 120mm in the front of some of the cases that can take it.
Mainly to get a bit more air in, to pressurise the case, to keep dust out.
Is this a good/bad idea???
3.Last but not least, the cooling of the Cpu's. Just when i thought i was onto something good, i read another thread to contradict my findings. With these i'm open to suggestions, bearing in mind they are all IntelP4's from 2.4Ghz to 3.2Ghz
In the threads i read, Papst and Panaflow seem to have a good rep. Sleeve type being the preference. Life would be so much easier if they made 2 types, noisy and quiet ones, lol.
The reason for doing the above are 2-fold. A - to make our room a bit quieter. B - To have a go at trying to do some overclocking. Even if we can't overclock, atleast it will be a bit more peaceful, lol.
We will also be getting siliceous Vantec noise dampeners and Vantec iceberq ddr heat spreaders.
Are we over doing it?????
All comments will be appreciated.
Thanks
Jon & Sally
0
Comments
For more specific intel advice someone else will have to step in. I can only afford AMD
Ram heatspreaders are hit in miss from my experience and many reviews. In some cases they work well but in other cases they simply add another interface that's not efficient at moving heat away from the ram (there's very little surfacec area on those things) and the increased width makes for less airflow between the dimms.
As for those noice dampeners i don't think you'll need them or that they'll will work well. It's better to make sure that noice doesn't get into your rig then blocking it.
As for cpucooler. Thermalright slk947u with good fan. I would go with papst 92 but for oc you might want to get something else. Enermax adjustible seems to fare well in this forum.
Positive pressure is a bad thing. You want slightly negative or neutral air pressure in a case, not positive pressure.
What cases are we talking about here, or at least what kind of fan mounts do they have (number, the size of fans they can take, location, etc.)
If you're using cases that have really awful stamped metal fan grills, you'll want to remove those, as it'll reduce noise and increase airflow.
As for overclocking, unless you have a really good case that'll take a good number of fans, overclocking with silent cooling is basically out of the question. Most midtower cases with 2 80mm exhaust fans and a single 80 or 120mm intake fan or whatever have trouble handling stock high-speed athlons or p4s with medium speed fans, let alone overclocked ones with low-speed fans.
So it's going to depend on the case you're using.
Anyhow, the best fans for low noise/silent use are Papst (expensive as hell, but basically the best fans money can buy), followed by Panaflo (less expensive, somewhat lower quality).
As for heatsinks, keeping an overclocked P4 or athlon cool with lower airflow requires a very, very good heatsink. I'd probably go with an Aerocool HT-101, a Thermalright SP-94, or Swiftech MCX478-V and a Papst 8412N/2GMLE 80mm/19dba/26.5cfm fan (or 2 in the case of the Aerocool).
The best P4 cooler is the SP-94.
Good luck with your cooling.
Geeky, the cases are a variety of sorts. Sally's main puter is a TT V1000A. It's running 5 of the standard fans that came with it, all 80mm.
The other 3 desktops are just average, no real name cases, except 1 x Aopen. That has room for 1 x 80mm in, 2 x 60mm out. All this will be fixed when the Dremel type tool Sally ordered for me arrives.
Planning on putting fans in the top of the 3 no-name cases. Also cutting the case fan guards out and replacing them with finger guards. (I remember reading a thread about that here, lol)
3 of our puters are able to HyperThread and they are the ones we're planning to o/c.
The rest will be cooling fans only. Have been looking at the Papst ones you mention and they are available on-line (in stock).
I'll check out the SK-94's and the Aerocool whilst i'm on-line shopping.
Marc, i've had a look inside the cases and some i can change to take 92mm or 120mm.
I just need to have another look due to my original thoughts were on "Positive pressure", but now found out "Negative pressure" is better. Just means the top exhaust ones i'm planning on will be changed to 120mm. All i have to do is move a couple of the cd/dvd drives to give me the room.
As for the o/c part, it's new territory for us, therefore my thoughts were to get the cooling right first and then start doing research and start playing around.
The bit about lapping i've read about is of particular interest. I'm making notes on the size grit to get, just need to find out what you use to keep it perfectly flat for maximum contact. Any advise???
Eyes Only, thanks for your input as well. I'm now going to look a bit further into the ram cooling. That's the problem not having any personal contact with puter enthusiasts, except via forums. Nothing quite like having a look at someone else's system in real life, lol.
Thanks again guys, much appreciated.
Jon
There is a good selection of complete kits to choose from and you can also go the route mtgoat did and choose your parts piece by piece if that's what you want to do.
It's quiet, it's efficient and it gives pretty good headroom for overclocking.
I'm using a Koolance Exos with a Zalman ZM-WB2 waterblock and it's pretty quiet compared to the wid tunnel I had for a case and I still get good overall cooling not to mention the fact that my GPU is water cooled as well.
In regards to water-cooling, yes, i discussed it with Sally and actually had looked into it a little bit. This is an area that is even more foreign to us, lol. As i'm planning to play with 3 puters eventually, i might just get enough parts to air cool the 3 cases, but only buy 1 or 2 cpu coolers as money is not that freely available.
Once we see how 1 goes trying to do some overclocking, we than can look at the need/alternative of water cooling. Looking at the price of the Thermalright SP-94, i'm glad i was sitting down, hehehe. Should we go with the W/C option, it really will only be Sally's puter as that is the main one for work and folding. The rest with the exception of my laptop just fold only.
Hmmm, now there is a thought. A watercooled laptop, lol.
In Australia the SP-94 sells @ $99.00AUD. Then it still needs a fan. Have looked at only one watercooling unit really, the Aquarius III, that retails @ $375.00AUD. It's something i need to research a bit further. I can get the Aquarius II for just under $200.00AUD and that is all i know about water cooling kits sofar. Don't even know the difference between the 2.
Love Sally's TT V1000A case so thought might stick with TT so to speak. Need opinions from people on that one, for sure.
Being in our 50's makes it a bit harder as we never learned about puters at school, hence everything we know is self taught and with help from this forum.
Anyhow, thanks for the comment Mat and wishing all goes well for you.
Jon
If you want to O/C do yourself a favor and forgoe either the Aquarius II or III as they are pretty low end as far as watercoolers go, check out www.koolance.com and look at the Exos to see a pretty good standalone cooling unit although I have no clue as to where in aussie-land you might find them.
I like them because they are easy to setup, require no lasting case mods and can be transfered from system to system as you go along.
Koolance even offers add on parts that will allow you to run more than one system on one Exos...nice idea if you have 2 pc's close together but I wouldn't suggest doing it with O/C'ed systems.
I'm glad to be back in action even if I'm just limping along on dialup although I won't be able to fold until I can afford yo pay for the increase in electricity usage so I'm not happy about being out of action on that count. At least I can be helpful in other matters.
$390 AUD and the waterblock is $71 AUD...seems high to me although I have a used Koolance waterblock I'd let you have for the shipping costs.
if you're interseted in noise reduction as well as cooling, have a look at your power supply.
I've replaced mine recently to good effect, see my sig, I was suprised at how much difference it makes. It seems to me that the single 120mm fan is better than the more conventional 2 x 80 mm fans.
Another point to consider with regard to overclocking, as you are folding ( and doing very well at it
You're certainly taking the right route by optimising cooling first. Good luck and fold on.
Cheers
Crypto :bigggrin:
Hi Crypto. The psu fans are something i have been thinking about aswell. As 3 of our puters are really no-name boxes, which came with built-in psu's, i'm sure the fans in them would be far from top of the range. The old phrase "Pay peanuts, get monkeys" comes to mind. You get what you pay for.
When we built those puters, i just got some average cases. With the money saved, i went and put it towards a faster cpu. Nearly said "Better". Don't want to leave myself too open for ridicule from the AMD fans, lol. Also 2x512m ram to give the HT part of the cpu something to get it's teeth into to do folding.
Though i put fans in the cases, as they had none, it's nowhere near right. I can feel the heat coming out of the back and i believe not enough flow. I'm a bit reluctant to pull the puters apart, one at the time ofcourse, to see what i need to do to replace the psu fans aswell. Case fan fitting is easy. It is exposed and i'm sure i can cut the extra holes once my new little tool arrives.
As far as the o/c'ing goes, it is really just to learn about it and to try and improve the frame rate somewhat, so not sure how far that will take us. Would like to make sure everything is in place before i toast something, lol.
Here i go again, talking too much. Thanks again guys.
If you have a piece of glass of some sort that would work great for lapping the HS. Doesnt have to be window glass but something that has a perfect flat side like glass.
Thanks Marc.
Lapping of heat sinks is fairly basic. Good 3M wet/dry sand paper and a piece of heavy glass or stone (I use a scrap of granite counter top). Start with 400 and work you way down, 600, 1000 ??? Add one drop of dish soap you your water to help flush the debris. I use a straight motion, turning when I change grits. That way I can make sure that I have removed all of the scratches from the previous grit before I move on. I don't worry too much about the finish. Making sure htat the base is flat is more critical than getting a perfect mirror finish. After all, that is why we use heat sink compound.
Slight negitive pressure works well because cases are loose and let air in easily and it prevents you from having hot air traped in the case.
Having a fan controler works nicely. In some of my cases the exhaust fans are very neat the HSF. In these cases high volume exhaust fans actually increase my CPU temps. I guess that they disturb the air flow through the HSF too much.
Good luck. Take it easy a step at a time. And take notes. You will stumble but that is what the BIOS reset is for.