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DCing equals baking hardware; keeping things cool

E

Elledan

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - April 2010
Joined
Oct 18, 2001
Messages
15,913
Today I checked up on the temperatures of all my folding systems and noticed that the Q6600 is back to about 70C on its cores, the 9800GX2 does 75-80C, and the GTX275 in my workstation (cramped case, poor airflow) does 90C. Room temperature is about 20C.

The main thing about setting up a 24/7 folding farm is that one runs into the same issues as one would with a data center, that of cooling and temperature limits. So far the temperatures I'm seeing here aren't very encouraging, especially considering that the room temperature will easily jump 5C during the summer, forcing me to shut down at least the GTX275 lest I really shorten its lifespan.

Anyone else having issues keeping things cool? Any useful tips?
 
I think people (depending on where they live), if it's warmer/hotter climates, will downclock or even shut down for the season (summer).

I have no problems running spring, fall and winter...I don't think I'll be running come summer though. Summer here gets in the 90s F (roughly 35C), internal temp in our house even with the AC running all day hovers around 76F.
 
Well what are you using for a heatsink on the Q6600? My Quad is hitting 57-66C at 3.6ghz with a Thermalright Ultra 120 extreme running A3 cores(23-24c room temp)

Make sure you are getting the hot air out of the case, and enough fresh air in so that the heat won't build up. The heat will still go into your room and raise the ambient but it won't be as hot in the case.

For the GTX275 since it's your main card, I'd look into a cheap VGA cooler for it.
Major temperature AND noise drop was well worth it in my case, I had an original 8800GT with a single slot cooler and it was hot and loud. Right now with a cheap $25~cdn (Coolink GFXChilla) on my 8800gt I am running GPU2 with load temperatures of 46-52C

The 9800GX2 would be harder to cool as it's just a funky dual PCB card, I'd try getting it naked and getting creative with some zip ties or whathaveyou.

Maybe you could duct all the hot air outside? It's hard to say without having a real overview of your farm and farm land!
 
All of those temperatures are perfectly fine, except maybe the GTX275 which I would like to see a few degrees lower. If the case the 275 is in has poor airflow, then you'll have to do something about that.
 
On your GPUs do you manually set the fan?

I had a 275 in my HTPC that kept in a drawer, so really bad airflow.
With the Fan set to 75% it kept temps in the 70's

Definitely need to fix that 275
 
the antec 300 case? if soo they need the intake fans much more than those ahaust fans. i use 2 front fans and the big one on top set to low. with the psu and gtx pulling air out. 80% fan speed on gtx. both i5-750 and gtx run right at 60c. when was the last time you cleaned out the 275 fan?
 
I put an Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 on my GTS250 and have yet to break 60C with slight overclock. It hovered between 80-85C with the stock cooler at full load.

I am one of those who shuts down during the summer. (Boxen are upstairs, I live in TX)

 
Yea that 275 really needs to be looked at. I run 2 of them and hover around 76c max. I don't know what case you have the 275 in but you really should have at least 1 fan in the front pulling some cooler air into the 275. Any way to put a fan in front of the card somewhere?

That's why I loved my Antec 900 case for this, I had to move things around in my new case to get the air they needed, still isn't as low on the temps as my 900 was but it works for now.
 
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I've found that most cases are better at exhausting air than drawing it in. On my Antec P182 I had the PSU, 2 HD4890s, rear exhaust and top exhaust all pulling air out, but the only way in was 2 120mm fans with quite a bit of flow blockage with drive cages and whatnot. I only had 1 optical drive so I removed the other 3 5.25" drive covers and zip-tied a 120mm intake fan right there. It really helped the airflow in the case.
 
I have a P180 case and an Antec Solo. As much as I like the front air filters (they keep out almost all dust), I have taken most of them out, because I have found they really restrict airflow. Im not familiar with the 300 but if it has air filters i would do away with them and blow out the case once a month.

Have you tried running the case with one or both sides off?
 
I find the best thing to keep temperatures in check is to lower T bulk (the air temperature!). Things on my end run very cool. My T bulk is usually around 5-10 C. Folding in a garage ftw even during the summer.
 
The GTX275 is in my main workstation (Athlon X2 4450e system), which is housed inside an ATX case I have been using for years now. It has a max of 3 80 mm exhaust fans, which are all in use at the moment. The Q6600 system (Thermalright HSF,92 mm fan, 2 full heatpipes) and 9800GX2 are housed in an Antec 300 case with the two regular exhausts plus a side 120 mm fan. Only the air from the top 140 mm fan feels warm.

I looked at a replacement cooler for the GTX275, but a) I don't have money for such upgrades and b) the Arctic-Cooling cooler requires separate cooling for the VRMs as the provided VRM heatsink sucks. Replacing the case would probably be more beneficial in general as well, say an Antec 300 with all fan positions used :)

Back to saving up money, I guess. Maybe if our first game actually sells... :p
 
My 3x GTX275s can get real hot. I have two EVGA and one ASUS, and I think they set the fans to favor silence over cooling performance. At one point I had rivatuner configured for a more aggressive fan speed curve, so the fans stayed cool when not being used (in theory) and ramped up more quickly when things got hot.

Now I just use evga precision to manually set aorund 70% fan speed.
 
jebo_4jc said:
My 3x GTX275s can get real hot. I have two EVGA and one ASUS, and I think they set the fans to favor silence over cooling performance. At one point I had rivatuner configured for a more aggressive fan speed curve, so the fans stayed cool when not being used (in theory) and ramped up more quickly when things got hot.

Now I just use evga precision to manually set aorund 70% fan speed.
Click to expand...

That's also an option together with a new case, I guess. I just don't want the fan to get too noisy :)
 
Just downclock the core and memory on the 275 while you're folding. You'll see a very small drop in PPD but the drop in temps should be pretty significant.
 
Elledan said:
That's also an option together with a new case, I guess. I just don't want the fan to get too noisy :)
Click to expand...
I hear you

(pun intended)

For me, the tolerable range for fan speeds on the 275 is between 60-70%, depending on the circumstances. I believe the default speed on my cards is around 55%, so just bumping up the speed to a constant 60% should show improvement. I would give it a try if I were you. It's free :)
 
Okay, I changed the GTX275 to have the fan run at 60% and downclocked the core and memory (~30/100 or so). It's folding at 75C now. Definitely an improvement, and not a moment too soon: this morning I saw that it had been EUEing a bit yesterday :eek:
 
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