My GMC case is now into its first summer. The office moved into the attic at Christmas and the ambient temperature up there is now as high as 35ºC.

Several times over the last week the PC has frozen and refused to reboot until it had had a rest (strangely, though, it booted fine into Safe Mode). MBM showed an idle CPU temp at 57ºC so clearly it's too hot up there.

Yesterday, I moved the Papst fan to the graphics card and added the 92mm Zalman fan to the CPU. I've also moved the Siemens portable a/c unit as it wasn’t cooling the right bit of the room. Hopefully the PC will go back to being stable, although the 92mm fan is too loud for my liking.

I'm not sure what could be preventing the reboot, as 57ºC isn't too high. I don't monitor the heat of the HDD so perhaps I ought to start doing that again to see whether that could be the cause. Does that sound likely? I would have thought that, if that were the case, it would not boot into Safe Mode either.

Perhaps the case's achilles heel, its front intake, could be causing this, but I guess that the high ambient temperature means that it is only sucking in hot air anyway.

Any thoughts?

Cams

Ah, the good 'ol GMC with the beautiful bezel and crappy airflow!

I'd experiment by removing the restrictive front bezel to see if you can get more airflow through the case. If that's not any better, remove the side panel as well. That should cool things down enough for you to see if that's the reason for your freeze ups.

If that's the case, you'll just have to find a way to get more airflow through the case. Right now you're basically just trapping the hot, stagnant air inside the case. With better ventilation you could at least be circulating air (even 35°C air ) through the case.

If all else fails, you could rig up a hose to run from the portable A/C to the front fan grill of the case.

Great idea! A little duct tape, some 4" flex dryer vent tube (Aluminum, of course!) ....strap that baby onto the computer and the AC unit and you might end up with with something worthy of inclusion in the Great SPCR Photo Gallery of Fame!

LOL!

I have actually got the A/C working better and in the same part of the room as the PC. It's even hotter today, but adding the 92mm fan seems to have helped as it's idling at 41ºC.

I fired up DTEMP as well and the HDD is reading 36ºC and so far, no freezes today.

I actually use the USB slots on the front bezel a lot, and also use the IDE to hook up my backup HDD so removing it would be a pain. I could take off the side panel but, so far, so good!

Cams

Maybe you can try cutting a venting hole at the bottom of the case? I've seen people do this on this forum.

And btw, where did you buy your GMC case? I can't find any retail shop that sells it in North America.

It's okay now I've added the 92mm fan. I still have some problems with system freezes, but that seems to be becuase of winlogon.exe grabbing 99% of the CPU.

I got my GMC in Germany. Doesn't New Egg do them anymore?