Athlon T-bird 1GHz - Questions!

Cooling Processors quietly

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nbarb99
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Athlon T-bird 1GHz - Questions!

Post by nbarb99 » Tue Mar 04, 2003 11:59 am

Hi all,

I have a few questions about making my T-bird a little quieter. I saw this site in PC World and I read some of the articles. I definetly want to make my computer quieter, it's driving me crazy! :D

I tried the quick and dirty 12V to 5V fan mod (didn't put the switch in though, just some good old wire splicing), and boy did it make a difference. The only problem was, my CPU was running much hotter (temp viewed in either the system BIOS or Motherboard Monitor 5). The rise in temperature wasn't unexpected.. the fan was spinning twice as slow (2500 RPM vs 5000 RPM).

I did a quick Google search to try and find out what the max temperature was for a T-bird but I didn't find much. Does anyone here have some figures? It was getting up around 145 F, which I OK with because it didn't seem too hot for a 1GHz chip. The weird thing was, during the night (yikes) it spiked to 175 F!! I have to say that I run the distributed.net client all the time, so that is obviously going to make the CPU much hotter than the idle temperature because of the constant data crunching.

I spliced my fan back into a 12V screamer because I wasn't comfortable with that spike. One thing I noticed when my fan was running at 5V was how loud my hard drive was! It was always drowned out in the noise of the fan but I could really hear the whining (I'm pretty sure it's a 7200 RPM).

Okay, here's my questions:

:arrow: What is the max operating temp of a 1GHz T-bird?
:arrow: What is a good choice for a quiet fan, or a heatsink good enough to run without a fan?
:arrow: I want to make my power supply fan quieter too, but it doesn't have a built-in thermistor like the CPU does... how can I get it quieter without letting it overheat?

Thanks!
nbarb99

Rusty075
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Post by Rusty075 » Tue Mar 04, 2003 12:23 pm

The max die temp for a 1Ghz T-bird is 90° C (194°F). Your temp of 175°F is nearly 80°C, that's alot hotter than most people would want to run a processor. It won't kill it, obviously, but it will definitely shorten its lifespan.

For good quiet fans you can't go wrong with a Panaflo L1A; they're quiet, move a good amount of air, are reliable, and are not too expensive. If you took a poll of what kinds of fans the people here run in their machines 90% of them will say Panaflo's.

As for heatsinks, the T-birds put out alot of heat. Your 1Ghz pumps out a max of 54 watts of heat. (that's about the same as a 2.0Ghz P4 northwood) Running completely fanless may be a tricky thing to accomplish for that processor. Have you read MikeC's heatsink comparo? Heatsink Roundup: 4 Socket-A Heavyweights Pretty much any of them will work for your setup, considering that Mike's test CPU puts out even more heat than your's does.

ez2remember
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Post by ez2remember » Tue Mar 04, 2003 2:16 pm

The problem is your Heatsink fan is too small and hence them spinning @ 5000 and a massive 2500 even at 5 volts. Get a heatsink that is big enough to take a 80mm fan and your problem should be resolved. Preferably a panaflo 80mm L1a.

If you on a budget and don't want to buy the best HS, just get one that can take a 80mm fan and say quoted for upto XP2200+ or similar. Your CPU dissipates about 20w less and has a much larger contact area. It will keep it much cooler than what you have at the moment.

nbarb99
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Thanks!

Post by nbarb99 » Tue Mar 04, 2003 3:37 pm

Thanks for the answers! I've heard of the Panflo fans but I didn't know which would be best. Would a Panflo also work as a replacement to my power supply fan?

ez2remember
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Re: Thanks!

Post by ez2remember » Tue Mar 04, 2003 8:40 pm

nbarb99 wrote:Thanks for the answers! I've heard of the Panflo fans but I didn't know which would be best. Would a Panflo also work as a replacement to my power supply fan?
I have a decoupled panaflo L1a @7v mounted outside of a generic PSU, it is about as quiet as you can get, except running at 5v of course. An important note is that you may need to have better airflow for your PSU by doing other mods. Taping the vents at the bottom of the PSU so it does not take up too much hot air from the CPU. You could also seal the the top part of the case by using a large piece of wood or similar running all the way accross to prevent any extra heat getting into the PSU. Or you could make a airduct like Powergoza system. There are others methods, it is upto the imagination. :lol:

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Post by MikeC » Tue Mar 04, 2003 10:49 pm

Don't forget to try UNDERVOLTING. If you can get the CPU to run at 0.1V less than the norm, you'll see a ~2C drop in temp. Go 0.3 (tough) and you could see in 6-8C. See the undervolting articles: the primerand LeoV's Ultimate Undervolt. The primer article describes how I dropped the Vcore from 1.79V to 1.17V & underclocked the 1GHz T-bird to 600MHz -- the net temp drop was -12C at idle and -24C(!!!) at 100% load.

nbarb99
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Post by nbarb99 » Wed Mar 05, 2003 9:43 am

Yes, I've read one if both of those undervolting articles. I'm just hesitant because I like my speed... :)

L4177312
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Post by L4177312 » Wed Mar 05, 2003 11:43 am

doing a little undervolting might not signifigantly reduce your speed. if youre interested in dropping temps a few degrees do benchmarks before and after undervolting. you might not even notice the speed difference.

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