Overheating solutions needed....

[ivandal2]

Ok, I just switched my studio/production machine (sound) over to a sff soution. For the first couple of months I had no problems whatsoever with it, it ran beutifully, no heat problems or anything. Now whenever I start getting into any serious recording sessions (2hr+) and its under load it'll boot down on me and go into heat protection mode. I can feel the exhaust out of the back of the case and it is in fact VERY HOT as far as air coming out of a pc should be.

I have a shuttle sb65g2 w/:
p4 3.0c
1 nec 3500a
1 80 gig maxtor 7.2k rpm 8mb cacha ide HD
1 250 gig WD sata HD
2 x 512 pc3200 corsair xms w/out heatspreaders
1 bfg 6800gtoc w/ stock cooling as I can't find a single slot solution that works any better and I am not willing to cut into the case
1 maudio delta1010 pci card

I upgraded to the 250w silentx psu (couldn't find anything w/ more power), and I have made sure there is plenty of space for air to circulate within the rig and have tucked all the wires away, but it still seems to overheat. I reseated the cpu and reapplied as3, still no temp drops.

Any ideas on how to drop these temps w/out hacking up the case as one of the only reasons I went w/ the shuttle is its compact and ascetic look. I've heard about cutting out the rear fan grill and replacing it, but is there anything else I should look into?

 

[IceWindus]

Thats a pretty maxed out system, so no wonder its having some heat issues. Hence that was the biggest reason why I decided not to do a Shuttle as I put the very best in my computers and I knew being as tiny as a shuttle is, I would run into problems.

Your options are pretty limited to a system that small, and most of the require to to start hacking away at the case.

1. Replace stock side panel with mesh side panel from Shuttle
Shuttle Mesh Cover

2. Remove PCI soundcard, use onboard and use PCI exhaust blower

3. Cut out rear fan grill to reduce back pressure on fan. It helps alot.

4. Cut out fan grill and attach 92 or 120mm fan to pull more air through the ICE cooler and system.

5.. Cut out your own side panel area with grill or own mesh or attach an outside fan for intake/exhaust

6. Install blowholes on top if CDROM allows enough room

7. It may be time to go back to a ATX spec machine to handle your hardware that you wish to run

 

[Decibel]

I have a very similar system...

sb65g2
p4 3.2 @ 3.5+
Plextor combo drive
74 gig Raptor
250 gig 7k250
2 x 512 pc4000 corsair xms
Saphire x800 pro VIVO @ XT
Audigy2 zs

I have the rear grill cut out and replaced with a wire 80mm grill. I'm also running a Vantec Stealth fan... which pushes less air than stock...

Let's start with some basic questions:

Overclocking? Stock voltages?
Did you swap the fan out? Is the 80mm fan working? All of the PSU fans?
Do you have a cooler running vid card you can try swapping in?
Do you have MBM5 installed? How hot is your CPU getting before it shuts down? Did you play with the thermal shutdown settings in the BIOS?
Have you tried running it without the case on to see if it does the same thing?

Are you sure that you have a 3.0c not a 3.0e?

The rear fan grill mod should cut your temps by as much as ten degrees and get rid of a bit of noise as well.

-dB

 

[ivandal2]

Let's start with some basic questions:

Overclocking? Stock voltages?
Did you swap the fan out? Is the 80mm fan working? All of the PSU fans?
Do you have a cooler running vid card you can try swapping in?
Do you have MBM5 installed? How hot is your CPU getting before it shuts down? Did you play with the thermal shutdown settings in the BIOS?
Have you tried running it without the case on to see if it does the same thing?

Are you sure that you have a 3.0c not a 3.0e?

The rear fan grill mod should cut your temps by as much as ten degrees and get rid of a bit of noise as well.

-dB

This rig is running at stock for everything as its use is dedicated pretty much to audio recording/editing/etc only and the stock speeds for all the parts do this job perfectly. I have not swapped the fan out as of yet and the rear grill is still on atm, but I will be removing it this weekend after I look into the best way to do so. All the fans are working properly and I have not edited the thermal shutdown settings at all within the BIOS. I threw in a few other vid cards and the machine still boots down, although it is usually much later (say 3.5-4 hrs of hard recording sessions). Definatly sure its a c core as I avoided the prescott cores for the exact reason of heat.

Any suggestions on fans that swap well w/ the stock one?


Also, to the original poster, removing the sound card completely defeats the entire purpose of this rig, so that is out, and I refuse to go back to atx cases as all the rigs within the house are now either racked or sff (this rig and the lan rig are the only sff's, the server, rendering rig, and 2 of the gaming rigs are racked).

I've been looking at the wire mesh panels and was wondering how much cutting would be needed on those in order to add a silencerV5 too the 6800gt if anyone knows.

Anyway ty guys for the help and any more opinions/ideas would be much appreciated.

 

[vapb400]

how crucial is the 6800GTOC to it? Do you game on it?
My only thought would be to replace that and do the fan mods, or water cool it.

 

[IceWindus]

how crucial is the 6800GTOC to it? Do you game on it?
My only thought would be to replace that and do the fan mods, or water cool it.

I agree, if this isn't your primary gaming machine, reducing to a lower end video card will help your temps drastically but it seems the rest of my suggestions were shot down, so do what you like.

 

[Decibel]

Here's another idea:

You could try undervolting your cpu. See how low you can get the voltage and still have it Prime95 stable.

Do you have any other p4 c's in the house? Maybe try swapping with one of them.

What modding tools do you have? To remove the rear grill pull *everything* out of the case, mask it off and then cut. My preffered tool for this is a nibler, but a dremel or another decent cutting tool would work as well. Once you're done, vacuum the case out thouroughly and reinstall everything. Like I said earlier, it should drop your CPU temps by up to ten degrees.

If you have a drill press and are willing to pick up a hole saw, I'd also recomend looking into whether or not you can fit a blowhole or two in the top of your case behind your CDROM. Like the pic IceWind posted between #6 and #7.

Another idea with the hole saw, and something I'm planning to do... when I get around to it... Is to cut a blowhole for your vid card fan. If you have a clean hole, and mount a grill, it could look damn decent.

A push-pull fan setup might be the somewhere to go as well. IE you have one fan mounted on the inside blowing out, and another fan on the outside, pulling the air out. Also visible in the pic between #6 and #7.

If you're going to try to mount a NVSilencer, take your measurements, plan it out and do something that looks decent. Most of the VGA Silencer mods I've seen look like ass. We're not talking sexy, college soccer chick ass here either, we're talking fat, hairy man ass.

And of course, there is always water.

-dB

 

[tree_]

Do those PCI slot exaust fans really work? I could just use the onboard LAN now that I got it working and take out my NIC card and add one of those blowers. Also whats a good way to remove the rear grill? I'll have to try that. Oh and whats a good fan thats cools well and is not too terribly louder than the ones shuttle uses. Thanks for any help (IceWind) =]

 

[IceWindus]

Do those PCI slot exaust fans really work? I could just use the onboard LAN now that I got it working and take out my NIC card and add one of those blowers. Also whats a good way to remove the rear grill? I'll have to try that. Oh and whats a good fan thats cools well and is not too terribly louder than the ones shuttle uses. Thanks for any help (IceWind) =]

They work decently if a little noisey. Best and cleanest way with grill is use dremel. Snips would work but your gonna bend the hell outa the metal. And yes, you wanna take EVERYTHING out of the case before you use the dremel or the metal particles will fry the board.

Putting in a vantec or Panflo fan will do more airflow at lower decibel levels then the crap Sunon will.

 

[Soldier Prime]

have you thought about replacing your thermal compound and reseating your heatsink, it should drop your temps, especially since shuttle sends out crappy thermal paste, you should use AS5

 

[IceWindus]

have you thought about replacing your thermal compound and reseating your heatsink, it should drop your temps, especially since shuttle sends out crappy thermal paste, you should use AS5

I reseated the cpu and reapplied as3, still no temp drops.

He already did that and AS5 wouldn't show much of an improvment

 

[tree_]

IceWind do you have some AS5 a 80mm quiet fan you'd recommend, or a PCI exaust fan I could buy off of you?

 

[G'ßöö]

Any ideas on how to drop these temps w/out hacking up the case

prob not then, get hacking. funny how this just started for ya with that gpu. have you isolated where the heat is coming from? IceWind gave you all the options..

mod mod mod! g'luk

 

[sixandout]

Not as extreme as watercooling, but have you thought about replacing the heatsink on your cpu? I assume you have a stock heatsink.

 

[k1114]

I agree with undervolting the CPU. It's the exact opposite of overclocking - most processors (especially those that overclock easily like the one you have) can run their stock speeds at well below the stock voltage. And since the power efficiency increases as the voltage decreases (the voltage to heat relation is not a straight line on a graph, its a sharp upward curve) you can probably cut down your temps a large amount by undervolting even just a little.

 

[splinter3k]

I know it's worrisome to cut your case and void your warranty, but chopping the grill was the best thing I ever did to my SK41Gs. I have 2 built almost idnetically and both idled warm and loaded up quickly, I cut the grill on one and while it didn't drop my idle temps much, my load temps are down signifigantly. I plan to cut the grill on the other one as soon as I have some spare time. Before I do I am going to set up a push-pull with some SilenX fans on the cut grill as an expirament, but I went from ilde 46, load 54 to idle 44-load 47 with an XP2400+ Tbred core. Remember, cutting the grill only voids the warranty on your case, they will still RMA the motherboard and PSU is need be.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

What I could suggest you investigate 1st, is to see if your PSU fan is not opposing your case-out fan, cause both of them try to suck out, they will also try to weaken each other, leaving each of them with ineffectively cooling their areas.

If this is so, apart from cutting the grills, i may also suggest you add 2x fans forcing air into the case, in such a way that these 2x fanse get enough fresh cold air as to not to influence each other.

As suggested, that black aliminium mesh cover, looks like it should make a great difference.

 

[ivandal2]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I ended up biting the bullet and removing the rear fan grill and that did drop my load temps by about 3-4 degrees according to my thermal probes. I went out and picked up the mesh side panels and after a small amount of nibbler work and some re-meshing the 2 agp fans and the psu fan are unrestricted as far as air source goes and that added another 5-6 degrees of cooling. I'm tempted to undervolt the proc as suggested also, but atm the rig is staying peachu during even 6+ hr sessions of full load recording and processing and still hasn't come close to the temps it was hitting.

Oh and I didn't mean to shoot down your ideas icewind, its just most of them weren't solutions to the problem presented is all.

 

[spugnor]

Another vote for mesh side panels. I've got 2 shuttle boxes, and old one (with vent hole sin the side) will fry the hard drive after about 1/2 hour of any type of 3D gaming with a 9700pro. The other (newer) shuttle that came with the mesh sides, doesn't even break a sweat with the same video card. The exhaust gets hot, but i've had that thing loaded down with HL2 and Doom 3 for hours at a shot, and no heat related issues. If i were a braver soul, i'd cut the exhaust grill out, as that is definitely giving me some flow restriction.

 

[Moto Guzzi]

The PC casemakers are years behind, they still make cases suited for 18W PII's.

 

[G'ßöö]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I ended up biting the bullet and removing the rear fan grill and that did drop my load temps by about 3-4 degrees according to my thermal probes. I went out and picked up the mesh side panels and after a small amount of nibbler work and some re-meshing the 2 agp fans and the psu fan are unrestricted as far as air source goes and that added another 5-6 degrees of cooling. I'm tempted to undervolt the proc as suggested also, but atm the rig is staying peachu during even 6+ hr sessions of full load recording and processing and still hasn't come close to the temps it was hitting.

Oh and I didn't mean to shoot down your ideas icewind, its just most of them weren't solutions to the problem presented is all.

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