Air cooling at a limit?

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crawlgsx

[H]ard|Gawd
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Aug 12, 2008
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I have tried just about every variation of newer air cooling and while the results vary slightly, they are all about the same (TRUE, S2183, Sunbeam CCF, S2184, zalman 9700, just to name a few). The zalman being of course the most varied as it isn't quite the cooler as the rest.

My question is, has air cooling reached its limit? I know air cooling of course has its limit of the ambient temp (would have to be one crazy air cooler), but I'm not even close to that. Running Orthos I can still get max temps of 70c with any of the above coolers (or above).

I keep trying new air coolers every time a new "king" is announced and find myself disappointed every single time. According to many reviews I read the CCF was suppose to be the latest "king" of air cooling, but it lagged behind my TRUE and S2183 (with xbow kit) by a good amount,

I blame most of that on the awful mounting design. I emailed Sunbeam multiple times and they said they had a new one created by an engineer that I could buy and they would put it on ebay for me, but every time I emailed back to say YES I WANT IT PLEASE NOW THANK YOU, I never recieved a response.

Anyway, point of my rant, is that I keep wishing for a cooler that could keep my q9550 @ 3.4-3.84 closer to a 20c idle and 45c max and so far have not seen anything close. I know water cooling would help but I have my doubts there too as well as the fact that I have an Antec nine hundred that I love but does not allow for great WC setups.
 
It doesnt make sense to change cooler every time a new "best of breed" comes out as the differences are marginal.
This is easy to see from the good reviews so shouldnt come as a surprise to you.

ps the Antec 900 has built in holes for water cooling pipes so you can easily use an exceptional water cooler.
 
Your only going to get so much out of air cooling, you are dealing with a pretty much fixed surface area (of the HS base to CPU that is), so when dealing with non aided air cooling it comes down the the metals or tech used, such as heatpipes but even they will only get you so far. Lapping helps, as it helps increase the surface area in contact with the CPU, this is one of the reasons that coolers like the copper TRUE and IFX-14 didn't do that that much better than the standard TRUE. To have a 20C idle temp it is going to be quite on the "cool" side in the room, as that is only 68F, far to cold for me. But if you like it that way, that's great, but if your keeping it that cool in there just for core temps you are wasting allot of money, what you would save on your electric bill you could set up a nice WCed/TEC set up. However why do you want those kind of temps? If you only clocking up to 3.8GHz there is no point unless you just want to be able to say "I have so and so temps". Which is fine, but you are just gonna have to break down and pay the money for high end cooling, and you might as well forget air cooling right now, unless you set up a TEC with a good cooler.
 
I will likely continue to use my s2183 as long as they keep making a new bracket for it. haha
 
crawlgsx said:
..Anyway, point of my rant, is that I keep wishing for a cooler that could keep my q9550 @ 3.4-3.84 closer to a 20c idle and 45c max and so far have not seen anything close. I know water cooling would help but I have my doubts there too as well as the fact that I have an Antec nine hundred that I love but does not allow for great WC setups.
Click to expand...
You really need to note that cooling works based on a hot to cold movement. So it is impossible to ever achieve room temp when cooling a larger load. Also water cooling only works better because it allows a much larger surface area to dissipate the heat from. You've run into the limitations of heatsink surface area for a reasonable sized unit.
 
Nenu said:
It doesnt make sense to change cooler every time a new "best of breed" comes out as the differences are marginal.
This is easy to see from the good reviews so shouldnt come as a surprise to you.

ps the Antec 900 has built in holes for water cooling pipes so you can easily use an exceptional water cooler.
Click to expand...

I dont consider mounting the radiator to the back of my case an option and I consider all external coolers sub par at best (water cooling that is, obviously there are much more expensive dangerous external options)

I only try the other coolers because so far not one of the Heatsinks has held up to the "good" reviews results.
 
BlueFireIce said:
Your only going to get so much out of air cooling, you are dealing with a pretty much fixed surface area (of the HS base to CPU that is), so when dealing with non aided air cooling it comes down the the metals or tech used, such as heatpipes but even they will only get you so far. Lapping helps, as it helps increase the surface area in contact with the CPU, this is one of the reasons that coolers like the copper TRUE and IFX-14 didn't do that that much better than the standard TRUE. To have a 20C idle temp it is going to be quite on the "cool" side in the room, as that is only 68F, far to cold for me. But if you like it that way, that's great, but if your keeping it that cool in there just for core temps you are wasting allot of money, what you would save on your electric bill you could set up a nice WCed/TEC set up. However why do you want those kind of temps? If you only clocking up to 3.8GHz there is no point unless you just want to be able to say "I have so and so temps". Which is fine, but you are just gonna have to break down and pay the money for high end cooling, and you might as well forget air cooling right now, unless you set up a TEC with a good cooler.
Click to expand...

My room temp can be sub 50f and still my idle temps are at best high 30's (c). I would love to have it 60f in the room at ~20c idle. (my room averages close to 60-65f)

I don't consider water cooling in option for 2 reasons. 1.) My case sucks for watercooling, for those who argue otherwise can look up the numerous posts about it. and 2.) I lan every friday and lug my computer around and don't like the idea of water in my computer while transporting it.

I should probably look more into TEC coolers. From what I have seen the "all in one" tec coolers tend to suck (or at least be marginally better than air at best). I honestly haven't looked into it past that.
 
crawlgsx said:
I dont consider mounting the radiator to the back of my case an option and I consider all external coolers sub par at best (water cooling that is, obviously there are much more expensive dangerous external options)

I only try the other coolers because so far not one of the Heatsinks has held up to the "good" reviews results.
Click to expand...

Interesting.
I consider mounting a radiator inside the PC case as a waste of decent cooling potential.
If you are water cooling to get better performance, rads are best mounted outside of the case where they have no airflow restrictions, can get a constant feed of cool air and dont heat the inside of the PC case.

Why not make your own radiator box that the PC can sit on?
 
the biggest issue with this is your to conserned with the temps.. it really makes no difference if it idles at 30C or 20C you dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. and at load weather its 45C or 65C you still dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. so really why are you so worried about what the temps are if your room sits at a constant 65F its obviously not effecting the temp of the room.. as for air cooling reaching its limitations.. yes it has with the traditional cooling.. that is why TEC cooling is the future for the air cooling market.. but as cpu's get into smaller processing like the up and coming 32nm the voltages will go down and so will the temps.. so as the cpu processing gets better.. the current air cooling technology will continue to follow it..

so in note.. quit worrying about your already low temps.. and turn on speedstep..
 
crawlgsx said:
My room temp can be sub 50f and still my idle temps are at best high 30's (c). I would love to have it 60f in the room at ~20c idle. (my room averages close to 60-65f)

I don't consider water cooling in option for 2 reasons. 1.) My case sucks for watercooling, for those who argue otherwise can look up the numerous posts about it. and 2.) I lan every friday and lug my computer around and don't like the idea of water in my computer while transporting it.

I should probably look more into TEC coolers. From what I have seen the "all in one" tec coolers tend to suck (or at least be marginally better than air at best). I honestly haven't looked into it past that.
Click to expand...

Like I said, if you want these temps because you want them and no other reason, then you are gonna have to shell out the money for it, if that means getting another case, then you will have to get another case. And like I said, aircooling it is not going to get you there.

If you do go TEC it would be best to stick with a good known cooler like the TRUE rather than some off the shelf TEC cooler. But then you are gonna have to worry about condensation. Everything is a trade off for something else, and most of the time its money.
 
Have you made a shroud that will force the air from the fan to go through the heatsink fins?

What is the static pressure of the fan you are using? Higher static pressure at the same or even a bit lower rated cfm will actually force more air though the heatsink fins.

What about using a real squirrel cage fan? Much higher static pressure and probably a lot higher cfm.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the biggest issue with this is your to conserned with the temps.. it really makes no difference if it idles at 30C or 20C you dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. and at load weather its 45C or 65C you still dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. so really why are you so worried about what the temps are if your room sits at a constant 65F its obviously not effecting the temp of the room.. as for air cooling reaching its limitations.. yes it has with the traditional cooling.. that is why TEC cooling is the future for the air cooling market.. but as cpu's get into smaller processing like the up and coming 32nm the voltages will go down and so will the temps.. so as the cpu processing gets better.. the current air cooling technology will continue to follow it..

so in note.. quit worrying about your already low temps.. and turn on speedstep..
Click to expand...

Agreed.... I switch out CPU's almost every year or two so it does not matter as long as the cpu works, default or slightly overclock. I don't water cool nor will I since it doesn't do much anyway, but cost the big bucks and may look good to some. If one can overclock a bit more with water cooling, good for them, but for me it doesn't matter since all my games run just fine with what I have. ;)
 
How would a super loud 100+ CFM 12cm fans work on the TRUE and the like? Sound be damned! Also building a duct for it would probably help aid heat out of the case.
 
to add to above post: build a duct from the outside into your computer.

hmm...

actually, build a duct from antarctica to your computer. Definitly.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
the biggest issue with this is your to conserned with the temps.. it really makes no difference if it idles at 30C or 20C you dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. and at load weather its 45C or 65C you still dont effect the lifespan of the cpu.. so really why are you so worried about what the temps are if your room sits at a constant 65F its obviously not effecting the temp of the room.. as for air cooling reaching its limitations.. yes it has with the traditional cooling.. that is why TEC cooling is the future for the air cooling market.. but as cpu's get into smaller processing like the up and coming 32nm the voltages will go down and so will the temps.. so as the cpu processing gets better.. the current air cooling technology will continue to follow it..

so in note.. quit worrying about your already low temps.. and turn on speedstep..
Click to expand...

Actually my room ambient goes up a SIGNIFICANT amount because of my PC. I am in Maine and keep my window open (its ~15-35f on an average day out mid day) to keep my temps to 60-65f. If I were to keep my window shut and my computer on ambient temps hit closer to 75-80f.

I was hoping to cool down the CPU to reduce the heat in the room as well as hopefully pushing the chip further (for fun) if It were cooler. (I wouldn't run it 24/7 higher because obvious the heat would just go up again)
 
cyclone3d said:
Have you made a shroud that will force the air from the fan to go through the heatsink fins?

What is the static pressure of the fan you are using? Higher static pressure at the same or even a bit lower rated cfm will actually force more air though the heatsink fins.

What about using a real squirrel cage fan? Much higher static pressure and probably a lot higher cfm.
Click to expand...

With my Scythe Slipstream, Sythe 38mm, or NO FAN at all, teh difference is ~2-5c. I tried all 3 with my CCF and idle temps did not vary at all (~1c) and at load no fan temps went up a measly 5c above having no fan at all on it. Either this is because A.) the heatsink is not effeciently bringing heat up to the fins, or B.) the air moved in the case from all the other 120mm slipstreams makes the HS fan useless.
 
cyclone3d said:
Have you made a shroud that will force the air from the fan to go through the heatsink fins?

What is the static pressure of the fan you are using? Higher static pressure at the same or even a bit lower rated cfm will actually force more air though the heatsink fins.

What about using a real squirrel cage fan? Much higher static pressure and probably a lot higher cfm.
Click to expand...

soulesschild said:
I heard the Coolmaster V10's are pretty spiffy!
Click to expand...

Then you apparently didn't do much research ;). It cools barely 1-2c better than a TRUE at any given result, and in most cases not even as good. The TEC on the V10 makes almost no difference (I am guessing because of the awful placement).
 
crawlgsx said:
Actually my room ambient goes up a SIGNIFICANT amount because of my PC. I am in Maine and keep my window open (its ~15-35f on an average day out mid day) to keep my temps to 60-65f. If I were to keep my window shut and my computer on ambient temps hit closer to 75-80f.

I was hoping to cool down the CPU to reduce the heat in the room as well as hopefully pushing the chip further (for fun) if It were cooler. (I wouldn't run it 24/7 higher because obvious the heat would just go up again)
Click to expand...

Unfortanetly, keeping your cpu cooler through use of better and better heatsinks will not make any change on how much it heats your room. Your cpu produces a certain amount of heat, it will produce that same amount of heat no matter what. Water cooling will also not keep your room cooler. Peltier and phase change will actually heat your room more.
 
I don't know man. I dont see more than 50c in Prime small fft with my TRUE and 2 3000rpm Ultra Kaze fans. My cpu is a Q9650 at 445x9 with a 1.344 VCC under load.
 
crawlgsx said:
Actually my room ambient goes up a SIGNIFICANT amount because of my PC. I am in Maine and keep my window open (its ~15-35f on an average day out mid day) to keep my temps to 60-65f. If I were to keep my window shut and my computer on ambient temps hit closer to 75-80f.

I was hoping to cool down the CPU to reduce the heat in the room as well as hopefully pushing the chip further (for fun) if It were cooler. (I wouldn't run it 24/7 higher because obvious the heat would just go up again)
Click to expand...

Using more/higher power fans will produce more heat.

There are 2 ways to sort this.
Produce less heat or shift air through the room faster.
There may be other things in your room plugged in and creating heat, switch them off.
Turn the heating down if you can.

To reduce PC power use:
Lower the voltages used, on CPU, memory, motherboard...
Dropping the clock speeds helps but not as much.
Get a more efficient PSU.
Use power saving on your hard drive(s).
Get a monitor known for its low power (if you dont have a low power monitor)
Reduce fan speeds.
 
serpretetsky said:
Unfortanetly, keeping your cpu cooler through use of better and better heatsinks will not make any change on how much it heats your room. Your cpu produces a certain amount of heat, it will produce that same amount of heat no matter what. Water cooling will also not keep your room cooler. Peltier and phase change will actually heat your room more.
Click to expand...

Good point.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
I don't know man. I dont see more than 50c in Prime small fft with my TRUE and 2 3000rpm Ultra Kaze fans. My cpu is a Q9650 at 445x9 with a 1.344 VCC under load.
Click to expand...

I hear things like this all the time, I can not reproduce any such results. I don't have a TRUE at the moment, I am currently using an S1283EE (xbow) with a Ultra Kaze 3000 facing the back of the case with a slipstream 110cfm pulling out.

My only deductions are A.) chips vary, not only do I have a C1 9550, but not all chips are alike anyway. and B.) you must have a fairly low ambient temp.

My chip is lapped as well as my HS and I still can not pull results like that. At STOCK clock settings I can barely orthos <50c.
 
I'm not all that sure how C1's fair in the temp area but my E0 will do 40's with prime etc, but I hit the low 50's with IBT. And that's running a IXP-76-18 SilenX fan at 900rpm.

Was your TRUE lapped? What kind of fan was on it? And what kind of volts are you feeding the CPU?
 
crawlgsx said:
I hear things like this all the time, I can not reproduce any such results. I don't have a TRUE at the moment, I am currently using an S1283EE (xbow) with a Ultra Kaze 3000 facing the back of the case with a slipstream 110cfm pulling out.

My only deductions are A.) chips vary, not only do I have a C1 9550, but not all chips are alike anyway. and B.) you must have a fairly low ambient temp.

My chip is lapped as well as my HS and I still can not pull results like that. At STOCK clock settings I can barely orthos <50c.
Click to expand...

It's the middle of winter and Im in New England, so Im sure things will change in a month, but not by that much. I usually keep my thermostat at 68F. I have 4 1900rpm slipstreams as intake fans and two as exaust, plus a huge top fan, 22cm I think. I haven't seen a cooler on the market now better than a lapped and pressure modded TRUE.
 
So many people overlook the importance of ambient temperature and wonder why Guy X gets better temps.

My PC temps can actually fluctuate almost 6c degrees during the day at idle. Firstly, let's remember that idle temps are pretty much useless anyway. Regardless, when I first wake up (room in basement) my room is very cool and I'm easily idling around 27c - if I open my window (Canadian winter) I can idle close to 20c (but why would I want to). Load is probably around 55 at this time of day. In the evening, after I've had my PC and TV on for hours (creating heat in my small room) and with the house heat turned on, my idles push up to 32-34 and load is closer to 60-65. It will be the same in the summer when comparing times with the AC on and off.

If temps can change so much in my room alone throughout one day, it isn't surprising that Guy X's temps are completely subjective and cannot always be achieved by Guy Y under his normal operating conditions. Hitting 45c on full load on air (with a big OC) isn't very common unless you keep your room extremely cool, so you're probably asking for too much.
 
I completely take ambient into account. But so many others are claiming they run between 60-68f ambient, which is about where I am. yet they achieve <40c idle and <60c load.

My idle temp is Always >40 and load is never <55c.

Right now my room is about 60f, my idle is 44c and my load is 59c after only 5 minutes of orthos.

This is with a lapped s1283EE with xbow mod and a lapped 9550 c1 at only 3.4 on stock voltage across the board with all 3 slipstream 110cfm's and ultra kaze 3krpm all at max speed. (2 110cfm slipstreams intake, 1 exhaust, plus the "Big boy" exhaust)

With my fans turned all the way down (fan controller) temps only go up 1c idle and 3c load.

I could turn it to stock and my temps would go down about 2-4c on each idle and load. Pretty minimal. Another thing that bothers me, why do I have so little temp change between 2.83 and 3.84??
 
Just for kicks I wanted to see if I could get my CPU temp down,

I underclocked to 2.4 on 1.1v (vid is 1.25v) and I still idle at 43c *shrug*,

Load however dropped to 49c.

Edit: Took it a step further, down to 2.0 @ 1v and still 43c load. So this means... my ambient temps are 43c right (j/k of course)

I think my video card may be killing my idle temps, is this reasonable?
4870x2, idle's at about 60c and is hot to the touch on the top of the card, which is of course only 2-3 inches below my heatsink.\

Edit2: new possible theory. Is my sensor stuck? At this 2nd underclock my idle temp is ~43c with a 10m prime95 load temp of 47 max..... This seems kind of silly.
 
That means your temp sensor sticks at low temps or the software is not calibrated to read the sensor properly.
The 45nM are known to have this issue as Intel have only calibrated TjMax and nothing below that.
ie my E8400 registers 42C as my lowest temp even when clocked as low as possible, volts as low as possible.

Ignore idle temps on 45nM chips.
 
Nenu said:
That means your temp sensor sticks at low temps or the software is not calibrated to read the sensor properly.
The 45nM are known to have this issue as Intel have only calibrated TjMax and nothing below that.
ie my E8400 registers 42C as my lowest temp even when clocked as low as possible, volts as low as possible.

Ignore idle temps on 45nM chips.
Click to expand...

That is about the conclusion I was coming to.

Thank you for sharing your case as well.
 
Yeh, idling in the 40s with your set-up is pretty high, especially given your ambient. Given what you've tried, there's obviously something going on to mess with the idle temps/displays. But like most people say, idle means little compared to load and your load temps were good.
 
mooseontheloose said:
Yeh, idling in the 40s with your set-up is pretty high, especially given your ambient. Given what you've tried, there's obviously something going on to mess with the idle temps/displays. But like most people say, idle means little compared to load and your load temps were good.
Click to expand...

My Quad has 3 stuck sensors. 2 never go below 35c and one never goes below 34c, I think. It's very common. My Wolfdale had a stuck sensor, too. Like you said load is all that really matters, anyways.
 
Nenu said:
Ignore idle temps on 45nM chips.
Click to expand...
More than that, ignore idle temps on any chips. They are really insignificant in comparison to load temps. The temperature of your CPU is not indicative of how much heat it is putting out but of how hot it is relative to its maximum safe value. As long as it is within safe levels, it doesn't even matter what your temperature is.
 
So I migrated from my CM 690 to Antec 1200 today and for whatever reason, my temps saw a big change.

I used to load at around 63-67 in Prime but in the new case I saw a pretty nice drop. I only hit 60 after about 30m and it pretty much wouldn't pass 60, sitting between 55-58 most of the time. GPU saw the same type of drops, down 7 in idle, down 6-8 in 3d mode idle. This is all without a side fan installed (will do later).

I didn't upgrade the case for cooling, so I'm pleasantly surprised and didn't expect changes like this. I was at my comfort limit for temps on my OC in the CM690, but now I think I can safely push for 4ghz :)
 
Swap out the stock fans for some good ones and you will see even more of an improvement. You can buy 2200rpm Yates from Petra's for like $5 a pop.
 
Yeh, I'm still working out a big order from performance-pcs which will include fan replacements.

Oh yeh, running fans on medium exhaust and low intake at the moment. Pretty happy with the change in temps given I wasn't expecting/intending on it.
 
crawlgsx said:
My room temp can be sub 50f and still my idle temps are at best high 30's (c). I would love to have it 60f in the room at ~20c idle. (my room averages close to 60-65f)

I don't consider water cooling in option for 2 reasons. 1.) My case sucks for watercooling, for those who argue otherwise can look up the numerous posts about it. and 2.) I lan every friday and lug my computer around and don't like the idea of water in my computer while transporting it.

I should probably look more into TEC coolers. From what I have seen the "all in one" tec coolers tend to suck (or at least be marginally better than air at best). I honestly haven't looked into it past that.
Click to expand...

There are three temps we're working with.

Ambient
Case
CPU

With air cooling, Ambient is always going to be the coolest followed by case temps. Your case temps will never be lower than ambient and your CPU temps will never be as cool as the case temps which also means it won't even be close to ambient temps.

My OCD regarding temps has long since passed. I OC to a level I'm happy and comfortable with, check the temps once during load just to make sure my HSF is properly working. As long as they're not dangerously high and my system is stable, I never worry about it again. I've found this way I enjoy my PC a lot more and actually get time to use it versus constantly spending money and making tweaks for marginal gains that in the end, really won't matter.
 
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