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I love the system that I built from your Parts. I should give you a break out what it ended up to be
ANTEC Black180 Case with Interior foam (my foam job)
550ANtec power supply -- Noise ??? no.
4 Channel HARDCANNO 13 Fan controller with Sensors
Fan 4( 120 high volume standard bottom case fan )is in the bottom compartment on the controller with Sensor 4 on the Side of one of the drives.
Fan 2 (120 3 wire new ANTEC quiet fan replacing the standard 3 peed rear fan)with sensor was in the middle of the CPU space about 1 centimeter from the Zalmam Force 4 passive cooler. Fan 2 is on the controller
Fan 3 (120 ceiling fan standard with switch in full max position) sensor is on #1 Memory stick with the fan controller
Fan 1 (Zalman 700) sensor is on the mounting bracket for the GPU and the fan controller channel controlled the GPU Zalman fan
The CPU Zalman7700 fan is plugged in the mother board
The 120 intake fan is mounted on the upper front panel with the disk cage removed (helped a lot) and set to run on the minimum setting of the 3speed switch (this fan was off of the back of the case when it was replaced.
Asus A8N-E board
4 separate 120mm fans (not counting PS) as above
Zalman Passive force4 chipset cooler
Zalman 7700 CPU cooler
AMD 64x2 3800+
4 GB of Kingston memory with copper jackets (four sticks)
PNY nVidia 7800Gt with Dual DVI and 256M
Zalman 700 GPU cooler
3.5 Floppy
HDD SATA 1TB 0-1RAID about 498GB usable (4 - 250GB Seagate drives in the bottom chamber)
Creative Chrystal X Fi Sound card with front panel attached (by ugly flat cable that I can’t find a round one for replacement)
CD/ROM (2)
Dual 20” 1600x1200 DVI 16ms Spectra (and they are fine)
A Firewire board (4 channel)
Round and cable sleeving everywhere (except for the creative cable, uhg)
I have taken about 500 different temperature reading with both a pyrometer, mechanical, and the thermocouples, It was great fun and I so much data that it is hard to fine tune the systems. In all cases, I also recorded Ambient (amb) temperature as the well as the other meter readings. Most interesting were the Temperatures difference from ambient (then averaged by run for a composite delta)
I was going to write a long technical paper on the entire situation but I realized that there were some simple truths. ( I am not a gamer and I use this computer for graphics and sound archiving. The reason for dual screens as I write a great deal (does not show here) and keep several dynamic panes open for cut and paste, it is fantastic.)
1.Ambient reading can vary as much as 3-4 degrees (even after a long quite night) by measuring them in different places
2.The hottest thing in the whole box is the Force 4 by far I have seen a reading of 57 from the Pyrometer (right next 32). Hard to measure the heat sink.
3.The memory was never pushed
4.The internal Duct blocked air flow and was basically worthless with or fan (pulling or pushing). Took the duct out and temperatures’ went down 2c everywhere (above the partition)
5.Put a fan in the duct and it the noisiest thing in the box. (Tried even quiet fans at 600RPM-- Little if any air). Duct vibrates.
6.If you get three wire fan with the” Hardcano13” speed controller it may drop to less than 600RPM and that will set off the alarms UHG. I cut the 3rd wire for peace.
7.Most fans run about 500-600 RPM
8.The roof fan is very noisy but you can put s sheet of 1/8 foam inside the covering, the air still gets out the back, and it makes less noise
9.If you set the Hardcano 13 Speed controller to 40 degrees it will start to ramp the fans at 31c—watch your settings if you want it quiet.
10.Fan controllers are insurance against that runaway heat when you are not home. Otherwise adjust them for maximum quiet at normal use (or idle)
11.If you case is under a hard desk, put some ½ foam on the back wall and underside of the desk. This will cut down the air noise (which is all I had left)
12.What are my temperatures after all of that, well here is a set from my last 100 runs or so? All temperatures on this set are Deg C.
2 @40c,2@50c 2 @40c,2@50c 2 @40c,2@50c Delta from
Quieter settings Quieter settings COLD START Cold start
7:45AM 2/24/06 7:15PM 2/24/06 4:30PM 2/25/06
35.2 14 2 37 14.4 33.7 11.9 3.3
38 16.8 MOBO 38 15.4 34 12.2 5
30.3 9.1 3 31 8.4 27.7 5.9 3.8
32 10.8 4 33 10.4 24.3 2.5 8.7
32.7 11.5 1 33.7 11.1 30.7 8.9 3.3
32 10.8 CPU 33 10.4 31 9.2 2
21.2 amb 22.6 22.6 21.8
12.2 11.7 8.4 This line is average Delta ambient for the run
I apologize for my lack of consistency in data representation, but enough was enough (I took over 400 sets (6-12 reading each over 5 weeks). I modified my data collection as the data unfolded on the 4th spreadsheet
11. I never found any temperature that ever went above 40C ( themister in the Fource4 chip) after I balanced the fans. THE Zalman passive sink got hotter but putting a measure on it could vary 30c depend on what part of sink you were on.
I looked in 100’s Google searches, about temperatures, and found.
•“If your 80c, Your Frying eggs”
•Anything under 50c “is fine!
•No one ever said they burned out the Force 4.
•No ever said the burned out any chip except by really “dumb stuff.”
•Everyone worries about temperatures.
•nVidia does not publish a Force4 temp spec (that I could find)
•Some people have chips that run at 23c?? ( amb is usually higher than that) except outside in the cold—useful.
•You would think that there would be a correlation between CPU and Force 4 temperatures – but only very roughly.
•It seems that all chips are good to about 70c Operating temperatures
•Some run at 80C? did he burn out? The guy that got 102c was having processing problems (did he burn out?)–no he cooled down and fixed his dead fan, and kept on trucking
•My high is less than 40c—I worry too much.
At this about flogs the temperature stuff to death, what about sound. Well, the way I am running now I can hear the system if:
The house fan is off, the house is empty, all thermal double windows in my room are closed, and I am alone in the room (and house).
But to give you an idea (I did not buy a sound meter dbs)
12. if the window is cracked the freeway sound .8 miles away is louder.
13. The disk drive on my laptop(5 feet away) doing a “defrag” is louder.
14. Some times the ambient noise in my ears (I am not a kid) is louder.
15. right now the ambulance 3 miles away is louder (different sound) and the window is closed
16. The piper cub at 6,000 feet is louder.
17. I have good ears ex classical ears.
Summary:
It is a great, fast, BIG, quite system (with too many fans)—I love it and had fun doing it. I will probably do another and make it quieter and cooler. I can get the force4 temp down with the new copper (fanned) chip cooler ( I saw somewhere on line) but I don’t want to remove the motherboard and rebuild the entire system. SO for now I can’t hear it, and everything stays under 40c.
Works for me!
What do you think will burn out or crash first in my system if I leave in on forever.
Always on, or off and on Standby???
Thanks guys--
Bill
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