1.CPU
2.Video card
3.HDDs
4.CD/DVD drives

If these are the primary culprits of heat inside your case. wouldnt it be best to vent the earm/hot air directly out of the case, in an effort to minimise case temps?

Thats why there are fans in front of the case, Back of the case, and on top. In some cases there are some on the side.

Not so much CDdrives as PSU

for the cpu, why dont they just vent it directly to the outside of the case? Kinda Like how Arctic Cooling does with the VGA Silencer!

so you mean a duct? people do that

Since I didn't purchase a house with a fireplace, I go ahead and use twigs and sticks to build a bonfire in the bottom of my case. That would more than likely be the greatest source of heat in my case.

Quote: Originally Posted by me_john85 so you mean a duct? people do that

yep. ducting, but i think people only duct cool air into the CPU hsf, then the heated air circulates in the case.

Im curious if anyone ducts the cpu heat out of the case?

Quote: Im curious if anyone ducts the cpu heat out of the case?

A lot of older PC's use this kind of cooling. The ones with just heatsinks and whatnot. But it is much more efficient to pull outside air strait into the CPU rather then pushing it out.

Look at BTX... that form factor really adresses this problem...

TDR

Quote: Originally Posted by The Dragon Reborn Look at BTX... that form factor really adresses this problem... TDR

i could be wrong about this, so dont take what im saying as gospel, i am just in no mood to google over it...but i have heard, specifically from Slashdot, that the BTX formfactor is a "dead technology", so if i would recommend doing a little research before committing a system to an unsupported foundation...again, i could be wrong, im still using a pretty darn archaic system and havent been keeping up the way i used to (marriage, work, etc)...

and i would have to say, of the things that generate the most heat in a case, after the CPU would definately be your HDD(S)...

depending on how many hard drives you have, they are a terrible culprit, simply because their heat covers TONS of surface area, and a typical user will not provide adequate airflow to effectively remove that heat...

cpus are usually underneath a power supply, and have a ready path outside of the case through the psus own cooling system...

modern video cards exhaust outside the case anyway, which kind of removes the GPU from the equation, however, video card memory (especially BGA-type) generate a good amount of internal heat...

and dont forget the chipset, it reaches temperatures approaching those of a gpu or even a cpu...

MOSFET's are culprits as well, especially on high performance / overclocked systems....

system memory (RAM), despite what others may say, is NOT a notable contributor, nor are optical drives, audio cards, IDE controllers, modens, nics, etc...

SCSI / RAID cards, particularly ones with onboard risc / hardware based controlling (easily spotted with what appears to be an actual bonafide CPU slapped on it) can generate heat

Power Supplies typically have VERY adequate cooling to keep their heat from becoming a problem for your system, quite the contrary, their cooling will usually benefit the system overall....

Quiet power supplies do not, especially fanless ones...

i would say, in a modern system, these are your problems, in order of importance...

1. CPU(S)
2. HDD(S)
3. CHIPSET
4. VRAM
5. MOSFETS
6. SOUTHBRIDGE
7. RAM
8. OPTICAL
9. "QUIET" PSU
10. ^ACCESSORIES

*Accesories = rheobus fan controllers (not PCM), ccfl inverters, water pumps, pci cards (nic, modem, etc),

I'd have to say my processor and my graphics card. the graphics card is mych cooler now that I installed a VF700 Cu on it. The harddrives used to be hot but I re-arranged them near a huge 120mm Panaflo H1A exhaust fan I have so the fan sucks the heat from the hard drives away.

The GPU and CPU would be much warmer if it wern't for 120cfm of dual 92mm fans blowing cool air directly over them.

My power supply is unusually warm too. Maybe it's time to mod it.

The case this is all installed in is a purpose-built case designed primarily for keeping things cool. I designed it for the sole purpose of extreme air cooling. One 92mm sits over the processor, the other sits over the graphics card. A giant 120mm Panaflo H1A mounted on the side of the case sucks all the hot air out. Cool air comes in through the top and warm air is exited through the sides. It's a very effective design, and with the cover off the CPU idles at about 44*C but if I put the cover on it drops to 38*C. The cover has all the fans installed on it.

Aw man BA...have you added a chimney and damper system to it? That would really help the efficiency. I'll bet the glow is nice and calming through the window...


Seriously, what was the point of listing the main heat sources of our systems, especially if they're wrong? Sure, CPU and GPU top the list, but putting optical drives on the list and ignoring RAM, Northbridge, Southbridge and mosfet cooling? Only if you're running an OS on CD would you have a drive running constantly enough to produce even a measurable amount of heat. Please, look at any case and tell me what provisions have been made for optical drive cooling.

For a good indicator of what actually produces heat in your case, look at what requires an active fan and/or a large heatsink. Now, consider that these tertiary hotspots require air drawn across them, typically in the path either to or from the CPU airpath. By isolating the airflow to and from the CPU, you would lose this tertiary cooling at the expense of negligable CPU cooling gains. This is why to date there are few to no truly fanless cases for a system of any real power. The few low-powered and underclocked systems I have seen still rely on convective air movement and/or heatpipes. Even watercooling (without expensive and tedious milling of custom blocks) still requires case airflow for all the peripherals. Even if one were to isolate every single source of heat in a PC with a complicated ducting array, is all the heat still pouring out into the same room to be drawn back through the case again? Simply moving the location of a case can mean temp drops that would cost hundreds in cooling gear. I moved my case from the hottest South side of the house to the cool North side, and saw my temps drop as much as 10F with no modifications whatsoever. This was due to the room being generally cooler, with better air ventilation.

Boy, I sure went off there, but my point is that attention is needed to the system overall, not just a couple hotspots, for truly effective cooling...and in BA's case, perhaps a CO2-based fire suppression system would make the most signifigant difference.

My whole computer is a BIG Heat Source!!

Quote: i could be wrong about this, so dont take what im saying as gospel, i am just in no mood to google over it...but i have heard, specifically from Slashdot, that the BTX formfactor is a "dead technology", so if i would recommend doing a little research before committing a system to an unsupported foundation...again, i could be wrong, im still using a pretty darn archaic system and havent been keeping up the way i used to (marriage, work, etc)...

Lol... no it's not dead but mainboard & case makers are a bit reluctant... going to BTX means seperate
production lines for ATX & BTX, which is something most manufacturers really don't want...

There are "hybrid" cases out there which can accomodate either an ATX or BTX board.

As heat is concerned... I guess the CPU comes first, followed by the GPU. If my hdd would be as hot as my GPU, I'd really be concerned!

Anyway... I hope we will see somekind of "universal" mounting system of GPU heatsinks, with 4
mounting holes and a backplate... would make our lives a whole lot easier!

TDR

Quote: Originally Posted by The Dragon Reborn Anyway... I hope we will see somekind of "universal" mounting system of GPU heatsinks, with 4 mounting holes and a backplate... would make our lives a whole lot easier!

The Zalman VF700 fits all graphics cards except Matrox and PCX GeForce 5 series.

The most heat in a case is from???? hummmm Well lets see i can use that power supply as a hot plate, and i can cook a egg on the cpu.

Quote: The Zalman VF700 fits all graphics cards except Matrox and PCX GeForce 5 series.

Absolutely True, J-Dogg... what I meant, however, was like with CPU's, one would have an absolute free choice of what GPU cooler to choose, if there was a universal mounting method... and, quite important,
without voiding warranty...

Imagine if we would be forced to use only "boxed" AMD & Intel coolers... brr... not a nice thought...

TDR

in my case i am running an average temp of 82 on both hard drives 74 on the psu and 99-96 idle processor and gpu running at about 100 with the air out the back of the case being an avarage of 75 with a room temp of around 72.
my processor used to run at about 116 idle before i changed cpu coolers and switched to better thermal paste and also spending a little bit more on a more efficient psu meant it generates less waste heat. also adding a fan to the side of the case dropped the gpu from 108 down to it surrent temp.

however on my moms pc there was is no front fan and two huge vented stock holes in the side of the case above the processor and vid cards. this allowed the rear fan to draw air from outside the case and out the back with out cooling anything. so i added a duct over the cpu cooler to get it fresh air instead of sucking the warm case air that was not being circulated by the back fan. By doing this i dropped the idle temp from 110 to around 99. however i did upgrade her psu to a lower quality one then my own and her psu runs at 89 to 90 at idle.

I'd say my gpu is the biggest heat problem in my case. The cpns9500 gets tons of cool air through the 92mm side intake, and directs all the heat straight out the rear 120mm and psu, so the cpu doesn't really add to case temperature. The hd's have a 120mm intake right in front of them keeping them at a constant 30-35c, so they're not a problem either.

Its just the graphics card. The thing's so fecking big it covers the chipset cooler making that hotter, and despite the fact i've got a fatality cooler on it; it still reaches 65c load. Before christmas nowhere had 7series compatible arctic coolers, and I couldn't wait so I got the zalman.

The thing that really bothers me is why are graphics cards still upside down? When pci cards were first invented it wasn't an issue because nothing provided much heat and everything came in desktop style cases anyway. When agp came out they just copied pci cards...... but when pci-e came out, they had a chance to rectify it. If they stuck the gpu on the top of the card it would be sooooo much easier to cool. The heat could rise upwards without having to warm the entire pcb first. It'd be closer to the rear fans, it'd be easier to route watercooling.... etc etc.

Quote: The thing that really bothers me is why are graphics cards still upside down? When pci cards were first invented it wasn't an issue because nothing provided much heat and everything came in desktop style cases anyway. When agp came out they just copied pci cards...... but when pci-e came out, they had a chance to rectify it. If they stuck the gpu on the top of the card it would be sooooo much easier to cool. The heat could rise upwards without having to warm the entire pcb first. It'd be closer to the rear fans, it'd be easier to route watercooling.... etc etc.

Thats a very interesing point you make here.... it really makes sense... question is.. why didn't they?

TDR