I've recently built a couple machines for friends using Antec Sonata cases and was wondering if anyone else has noticed the heat from the power supply. The exaust air is hotter than I've ever seen with any other case, much hotter than the exaust from my Antec 350w. Anyone?

Cos

yeah they do get hot, but from what I can tell the components aren't too hot, right now the temp of one of the psu's heatsink in my system is 44°C, the air coming out of it is 38°C and the air being taken in the back of the psu is 29°C

The actual psu component temps aren't any higher than I've seen in other systems but for some reason the air being exhausted is

The 380S power suppy found on the Sonata only has one fan, unlike the normal 380 PSU. That may account for the extra heat.

What I observed is that the 120mm case fan doesn't seem to be doing much work. The exhaust air from the case fan is cool. My suspicion is that most of the heat rises up to the PSU before the case fan can exhaust it.

Someone in the forums (sorry, I forgot your name) built a partition between the PSU and the bottom of the case. That should help, in theory. I haven't had the chance to test it myself.

I don't think that would help really because this would just restrict how much air the psu can get, better to have plenty of warm air than little cool.
The 120mm fan doesn't exhaust very warm air, but it does help create negative pressure in the case bringing the air in from the front. Turn it off and you will see your hard drive and northbridge temps soar

I suspect that some/most of the heat is coming from the power supply itself, I have a similar system with no case exaust fan other than the pwr supply fan and the exaust air is noticably cooler than either Sonata.

Actually building a PSU duct (That's what we at SPCR call that partition.) is one of the standard Sonata mods. Not just one "someone" has done it, but lots of people. I am one of them. I measured the voltage the fan controller in the PSU supplies with and without (a very crude) PSU duct. With the PSU duct the voltage is 0.3V to 0.5V lower than without. So it certainly works.

Searching the forum for PSU duct will get you lots of good examples how to construct one. From simple one piece of cardboard solutions to more elaborate ones.

Still most of the heat is generated inside the PSU, because it has a fairly low efficiency.

Usually a PSU duct like lenny mentioned is accompanied by opening one of the drive bays in front. Also, the side intakes in a Sonata (the holes spelling "Antec") are not to be underestimated.

Tibors, did you open a drive bay in front, or did you use only the side vents?

I left the Antec holes open. I put a piece of plywood and a piece cardboard over the crossbar and the optical drive. I didn't seal any gaps, so there is still leaking some "hot" air from the lower compartment along the optical drive. I tried it with and without the covers on the empty drive bays, but with the door closed. The difference was ~0.05V, so not significant. Opening the door shaves of 1V, but if I wanted an ugly case, then I wouldn't have bought a Sonata. So that's not the way I run it.

I guess you can technically call it a duct, though a duct (at least to me) means that there is a source of cool air from the outside. The ANTEC holes help, but they're not quite enough.

A partition between the two (sort of like the partition in the P180 between the bottom PSU and the motherboard tray above) is to "encourage" most of the warm air to leave via the rear fan.

If you don't run the rear fan, what happens is that there's this big gaping hole in the rear, and most of the airflow will follow the path of least resistance and enter from that hole and leave via the PSU, leading to higher HDD temps since little cool air will come in from the front bezel.

Perhaps you'll get better results if you seal up the rear fan exhaust.

Just some thoughts on the issue without experiment results to back it up.

I too run my Sonata with a simple piece of cardboard separating the PSU compartment from the motherboard compartment. I think that is a good arrangement for several reasons:
* smooth airflow in the motherboard compartment - in at the front bottom, out at the rear top
* good airflow over HDDs (the most important component to cool)
* airflow in motherboard compartment aided by convection
* blocks noisepath from the CPU fan to the 'Antec' holes
* the CPU has its own cool fresh air intake from the 'Antec' holes and a little through the front drive bays

I noticed that my PSU fan speed reduced compared to the previous arrangement. I agree that the PSU exhaust temperature is surprisingly high. I think that is a combination of a hot running PSU and low airflow through the PSU - but if it needed more airflow through the PSU then it could increase the fan speed. Whatever, I don't care at all if my PSU runs hot, that can't damage my data and it is the easiest and cheapest component to replace if it does shorten its life.

Good to know that! Will close my top drive cover promply.
Is that 1V in addition to the gain from the duct with closed door, or 1V from the initial "unducted" state?

Seriously? I would focus on cooling the cpu and power supply first.



1. PSU runs too hot
2. PC locks up during some critical operation
3. Reboot and discover hard drive data is trashed

This happened to me yesterday, not kidding.

First measured with duct, no drive covers and closed door, then measured with duct, no drive covers and no door. The difference between those two was 1V.

If you have a better seal between the lower and top compartment, then removing the drive covers (behind a closed door) might have more effect.

Of all the components in the PC, the hard disks (the data in the drives, to be exact) is the most troublesome to replace, even with backups.


Yeah, I agree. Problem is, as always, figuring out what is "too hot" in terms of temperature.

CPUs can withstand temperatures of over 60°C quite easily, recent ones will throttle/shut down if need be - hard drives, however, do not, and some of (if not all, for some irresponsible people) the data they contain can't be replaced. PSUs can react to themselves heating up by spinning the fans faster. Desktop hard disks have no natural defences. If case airflow gets worse & worse, soon natural selection will choose fanned hard disks - and you don't want that!

Very sorry to hear that. The moral of that story is, open your top drive bay door on the Sonata when doing critical operations.


I've pushed my Athlon XP-M over 100°C when experimenting with no CPU fan (I was ducting to the case fan but the duct became unattached). The Asus motherboard shut the PC down using its COP technology (http://www.asus.com/products/mb/cop.htm). That heatsink burned your hand if you touched it, took 20 minutes before it had cooled enough for COP to let the PC turn back on. No lasting damage to the CPU or my data.