Cooling Help!!

[haydock2005]

I recently upgraded my pc with a new mobo, cpu and RAM, but yesterday it stopped working! it turned off and refused to turn on! After a few hours of head scratching me and my brother finally concluded that it was the CPU (AMD Athlon64 3000+) or the mobo (ECS K8 NVIDIA Socket 754 DDR400 AGP (P21110) NFORCE3-A ATX) which was busted! I am sending them to be replaced but i think one reason for their breaking was that the heat that they were kicking out was hanging around and not 'going away'. I have attached a picture of the place where the tower sits (called hole!.jpg) and the red wall is on the left, if it isnt the correct way round. From the picture you can see that there is a wall to the left of the tower, wood to the right, top and back and the floor beneath! I have also included a picture of my tower (with proposed rig drawing!!), and as you can see it doesnt have a case on, as it got too hot!! The bad thing with no case is that i cannot easily attach some fans to it to hopefully blast the air out of the front of the tower's corner! i could easily make a 3 bar 'rig' which i could attach to the bottom and top of the tower, so attach some fans to, but i dont know whether the fans should be blowing air or sucking air, and i dont know how many i would need!

i have included a quick (and childish) pic of what i propose to attach fans to (called tower + rig.jpg). The red lines are the metal supports and the blue boxes are where fans could go (i could get more than 4 in as you can see). Also the blue arrows are the direction i want the air to be blown, the ebuyer fans apparently blow it in a certain direction, but im not sure hence this post!

The fans i am looking at are from www.ebuyer.co.uk and are their own make (the cheap ones! but they get good reviews). They also may sell tubes to direct air, but i dont know much about pc cooling!

Any help regarding a better 'rig' and the correct way to attach fans and how many would be greatly appreciated!!

My budget isnt really high, but the ebuyer fans are only up to £1 each, so its not going to be too hard!

Thanks

Richard Haydock

 

[jancz3rt]

Heya

I have done a very fast sketch in PAINT for ya. There is one inflow FAN in the bottom of the front. One side fan. One top fan and one back fan. The blue arrows point out the direction in which they should be blowing. I would definitely try and place the PC elsewhere as the hot air cannot really escape from the back of the PC in the "hole".

JAN

 

[haydock2005]

Thanks a lot for that.
But my case is extremely old! and when i say old i mean ancient! There is no room for the rear fan, i could get a front fan in but it would involve drilling a huge hole through the front of the tower, the top fan is possible but due to the case layout there is a mass of power and ribbon cables blocking it and for the side fan i would have to make a special rig!!

So basically i could have up to 4 fans on the left side, possibly one on the front (there appears to be some fan holes cut into the metal but the plastic front covers them!! - i can drill through), one on top past all the cables, if it was powerful, but sadly none on the back!!

Also, there is about 3 inches to the left and about 1 inch to the top and back!! so sod all room.

A new case is out of the question as my current one is (WxDxH) 190x420x470, and all the new ones i looked at were bigger, and ive spent enough money on the damn pc as it is!!!

I suppose the fans would help as bit as the front one would pull colder air in from the front, and the top one (covering the only hole at the top where air can enter) would stop hot air going back in and on the side i could have a low down one blowing cold air in and a higher up one blowing the hot air out (as hot air rises).

So, in the style of your drawing, it would look like the attached image (i dont know how to add them like you!!). I also apologise for the image size, but ive hit my maximum for uploads!!

Thanks again

Richard

 

[jancz3rt]

I see no immediate problem in your suggestion. Since you are limited by the case as you have described, it would definitely bring some decent airflow in your case should you choose to follow your picture. What I would do if I were you would be to do the side fans and check the temperatures. If they remain decent, then I would leave it. If you would not be sattisfied, perhaps the front intake could come in handy. The top exhaust helped me decrease the temps by a lot because as I know you have pointed out, hot air rises. I hope this helped you a bit and feel free to ask more.

JAN

 

[helmie]

Just to warn you, the cheap fans on ebuyer are REALLY noisy, and the LED fans burn out quickly. I dont buy any ebuyer value stuff.

 

[OS Dragon]

Wow, I haven't been here for a while. I'm 75% finished building my computer (specs below) and I just noticed that there are no holes to mount the fans on. Is it safe to drill the holes myself while all the components are still in there?

 

[OvenMaster]

Safe? Not in my book. Guaranteed, you'll get metal chips and shavings all over the place. I need to work on my own case myself, and the only way to not get metal bits all over the parts to short them out is to completely disassemble everything. One stray fragment of metal will ruin something. Why take chances?
Tom

 

[dragon2309]

i cut a custom window in one of my old PC's, it was 1.5mm steel, cut it with a power jigsaw cutter. the immediate finish was terrible, out came the file set 40 mins later, nice and smooth edges, paint job was shit, respray for 3 coats, bingo, all done. One thing about what oven master said, most cases you can take the panels off, including the top panel, there are 2 screws at the top on the back, abover the PSU. take EVERY panel off and then go work on themAWAY FROM THE PC, and i mean AWAY, like downstairs and outside, lol

dragon

 

[OS Dragon]

Thanks for the warnings/ advice. Got the holes in, just need the right size holes next time. I'll have to go and get the right drill bits. I had to go and buy a drill but I don't have all the bits I needed.

 

[danrec]

New case time

It is always better to spend the money on getting a new enclosure and power supply when buying a new motherboard and new CPU. Why not protect such a large purchase by buying a new $99cnd case/power supply.

 

[jbrown456]

It is always better to spend the money on getting a new enclosure and power supply when buying a new motherboard and new CPU. Why not protect such a large purchase by buying a new $99cnd case/power supply.

I would have to agree with danrec there. If you just upgraded the whole thing, while you're at it why not upgrade the case. New cases are a lot nicer.

EDIT: Then you could also do what Jan said before...

Gadda love MS Paint!

 

[ChrisHarris]

Adding case fans is one of the best things you can do to drop temps. I added a couple extra fans and dropped my CPU temps significantly.

I used to only have exhaust fans--now I have 2 intake and 3 exhaust. Bringing in fresh cool air is a big part of it.