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antec sonata cooling

S

Stupid2

Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2001
Messages
553
questions questions.
Well to start with, I haven't put together a comp or changed cases in a good 3 years. Recently I did a "budget" upgrade and bought an antec sonata and a new mobo/proc/ram. I went with the sonata as I was very tired of my old antec soho case with 6+ fans that sounded like a vacuum cleaner. However, I'm somewhat concerned about the cooling - I've just gotten things setup and everything is stock (including the stock hsf on my xp2700), my room temp is somewhere around 73F but my antec case temp is 98F/36C. I've got two hard drives, one optical drive, an old geforce3(next in the upgrade scheme), and 1 gig of Ram. Do these temps sound normal for someone running one of these cases with stock cooling setup in the antec sonata (e.g., the single 120mm fan)? My processor is sitting at 111F/44C idle.

thanks much for any input, just a little nervous about those temps (the case temp seems rather high compared to the room temp).

--ok, also, coming from the power supply of the sonata there is a small blue and black three prong plug that has a tag on it: psu monitor fan, currently this isn't plugged into a fan header on my motherboard but I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, the 120mm fan is plugged into the FAN ONLY molex connector coming from the psu--

--after running prime95 for about an hour now my temps appear to have peaked at 59/60C for cpu and 43C for the case, this sound right for stock cooling all the way around (no AS just stock amd hsf with "thermal pad"?--
 
The Sonata case is designed for quiet operation and sacrifices some airflow to do so. So your case temps are gonna be a little higher than normal.

As for the wire coming out of your psu, thats a rpm monitor wire for your psu fan/s. If you plug it into your mb fan header and use some type of monitoring program like MBM5 you can keep an eye on your psu fans.
 
thanks for the reply - I figured my temps would be a little higher then normal just wasn't sure if the ones I listed above were normal for a sonata running an xp2700ish processor with stock cooling, e.g., not sure if something isn't situated correctly or if those numbers are normal.

thanks much

ok, another question that perhaps isn't best for this specific forum but..: It looks like prime95 died after about two hours with a hardware exception error, something to do with rounding, e.g., rounded 0.45634789 (don't remember exact numbers) expected 0.4. Any suggestions?
thanks

--ok, edit again, anyone know if there are any mounts for 80mm fans in this case? I have a rack of very quiet panaflo 80mm and I'm curious if I can throw one of these in here to compliment the 120mm--
 
If the Sonata is anything like the 3700BQE, one option might be to mod the bottom of the front bezel to remove the bulk of the plastic area with the slit vents and put some wire mesh or modder's mesh in it's place. Add a filter if dust is a concern. Another option is to put a blowhole on the side. But the front bezel's slit vents does more to restrict airflow than anything else making the 120mm fan on the 3700BQE at the front just about useless.
 
There is a place to mount the front 120mm fans. It is located like 2/5 from the front of the case, past the HD cage..... It is designed to run quiet, but it does run pretty cool. You might want to replace that thermal pad with AS, unless you are not comfortable with that...
 
yeah thanks much, I was hoping to use some of the 80mm fans I have laying around. I'm thinking I'm going to buy one of the Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu and throw that on with some AS. Just wanted to see how the stock cooling worked out. Any recommendations on a dead silent 120mm to put in the front then?

thanks much!
 
I just started using this case myself. I have the amd promo in there. Running about 53 at load on my amd 64 3200. I added a front 120 where it goes on the hdd cage last night. Sucks that those little rubber fan mounts that dont see to be reusable if you want to change fans.

I 7volted the 120 in the front since i switched the psu to a fortron 530w. I love that this case is quiet compaired to my 8 fan antec full tower but case temps are alittle higher.

Im testing to see if having the ANTEC covered helps or hurts temps now.
 
firebuster, thanks for the input, let me know if that helps. Also, anyone know the quietest 120mm I can find? (looking for most silent possible air flow be damned).
thanks!
 
thanks much for the replies, it sounds as if I should definetly ditch the stock hsf and grab a zalman with som as 5 or something like that.
 
hey this is a followup to any sonata owners: What are your idle case temps at? My idle case temp is running about 31C which is a fair bit above ambient - is this average or....(can't really think what else to do, I have 2 120's running although they are both running off the undervolted antec psu fan molex connector). Ok, added here:
The main problem I have is that my idle case temp is about 31, but after I run something that puts a fair bit of load on things it takes over a half hour for the case temp to drop back down to normal (I've noticed that the air coming out of the rear exhaust fan is cool but the air coming out of the power supply exhaust is extremely warm ... ? ).
Thanks for any input.

muchas gracias
 
I'm running just the rear 120mm fan in the Sonata along with the stock PSU and a 2500+ cooled by a Volcano11+. My load temp right now (running SETI) is 54. I can get it down to 48 if I crank up the Volcano's fan, but it's just too damn loud. I'm thinking my idle temp is about 33 or so, but that's just a guess, and I'm too lazy to close SETI and let the processor cool down. :D

I've got another 120mm fan around somewhere, I will have to see if it makes a big difference. Another thing you might want to try (if you haven't) is plugging the 120mm rear fan into a normal power connector (not the ones marked "fan only"). It's slightly louder but I've found it makes a world of difference with ambient temp...
 
The sidewinder hard drive cage of modern Antecs restrict a lot of air. I have a 36cfm 92mm fan behind the front bezel of my 3700BQE and I could barely feel any air get past the drive cage. With this setup and the stock 120mm rear fan, my idle temps were cpu43C/case35C (ambient27C). Load temps were cpu47C/case36C. Then I decided to put a 80mm fan where the Sonata would have its front fan (behind the drive cage) to help pull air to the mobo. Idle is now cpu42C/case32C, and load cpu45C/case32C. Case temps rarely budge now, 1-2 degrees at the most.

Try finding a way to add more fans to pull air in if your temps are still bothering you.
 
Also, overly warm air coming out the power supply should be normal. The Sonata's power supply is a single fan TruePower, while standard Antec TruePowers have 2 fans in them, also take into account the low intake air the case receives, therefore it's expected that your PSU runs hot. My single fan SmartPower blows hot air too when under load (which gave the computer a nice fresh PCB smell when it was still new :rolleyes: ).
 
thanks for the replies. Yeah I've thought about plugging in one of the fans into the normal molex, but damnit, I like quiet (came from an old antec soho case with 4 80mm, loud psu fans, a slot cooler, and a LOUD delta screamer on the cpu so I really want my silence these days). I'm just finding that this case is no where near as quiet as I had hoped it would be though, but I'll be replacing the stock hsf with an slk900a and an 80mm panaflo so hopefully that will help things a bit (the stock cpu can is running at 6000 odd rpms).

I'm still a little bothered by the fact that it takes soooo long for the case to cool back down after being under load, that seems a bit unusual. Last night I tried it out again for awhile and the case never got back down to idle temps after being under load.
 
Yes the sideways drive cage is an airblock. On a Superlanboy I drilled a bazillion holes in the structure of the uprights, it let alot more air in. Also removed the grill-like area in front of the front fan...just dremel'd out the aluminum. Even with holes it was still quite restrictive. I also placed a 120mm fan in the door window, centered on the AGP/DDR dimm intersection, so the slow air blowing quietly went right over the video ramsinks and the ddr sticks. Was good for about 5-10Mhz boost on both ddr and videoram OC's too.

I prefer the non-BQE front/back disk rack... ala my LX 6A19, a SLK3700AMB clone.

Combining a Superflower PSU with 120mm fan, door/window side 120mm fan, and the normal front+back 120mm fans, these cases can be quiet AND very breezy!!
 
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