Is a 5v Nexus enough to cool the Antec Phantom?

ATWindsor · Post by **ATWindsor** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 3:03 am

I have an antec p180, in the bottom chamber I only have a PSU and a nexus-fan (120mm) . I used to have an elan vital greenberger, but i turned itself on from time to time, despite beeing (IMHO) pretty good cooled with a nexus at 7v. I then replaced it with an antec phantom. However, at 7v it now makes a pretty noticable turbulence-sound. (seemingly the phantom generates more turbulence). The sound goes away if i put it at 5v. But is that enough to cool the PSU? And if it is, is it borderline enough, or more than aqedate?

My rig is a X2 3800+, with 6600 GT and one HD.

AtW

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 5:05 am

It should be enough.

I have a nexus@5V in the upper chamber, everything is passive, CPU GPU etc. I believe they generate more heat than the PSU itself would.

ATWindsor · Post by **ATWindsor** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:02 am

Ackelind wrote:It should be enough.

I have a nexus@5V in the upper chamber, everything is passive, CPU GPU etc. I believe they generate more heat than the PSU itself would.

Yeah i guess, I would guess my system uses no more than 250 watt in the peaks. That is abit over 60 watts in the PSU, if it has 80% efficiency. Which is a good deal. But the PSUs have much larger surface, and a big hetsink. But I think the operating temperature is lower. So it's difficult for me to say...

So it would be nice to know if its more or less guranteed not to be a problem....

AtW

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:57 am

I will be getting my passive PSU tomorrow (FSP Zen) and I will use a [email protected] to cool it along with my hard drives. In a P180 setup, it will have one dedicated fan instead of when mounted in a normal case, only relying on the exhaust fan.

schmidtl · Post by **schmidtl** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 6:57 am

I have a similar setup, except I also have my HD in the lower chamber. 5v works for the Phantom, but the HD gets pretty hot (50+ C), so I run it around 7V

ATWindsor · Post by **ATWindsor** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 10:07 am

schmidtl wrote:I have a similar setup, except I also have my HD in the lower chamber. 5v works for the Phantom, but the HD gets pretty hot (50+ C), so I run it around 7V

Do you know "how well" it works?

AtW

JonV · Post by **JonV** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:32 am

I was running my Phantom in the lower chamber of my P180 for a long while with no fan at all. I had no problems whatsoever, and I measured the max temperature at the surface of the PSU to 50C.

Since then I've added a couple of hot hard drives to the lower chamber, so I added a Nexus which I keep at 5.5V. Still no problems, and the hard drives max out below 50C.

ATWindsor · Post by **ATWindsor** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:54 am

JonV wrote:I was running my Phantom in the lower chamber of my P180 for a long while with no fan at all. I had no problems whatsoever, and I measured the max temperature at the surface of the PSU to 50C.

Since then I've added a couple of hot hard drives to the lower chamber, so I added a Nexus which I keep at 5.5V. Still no problems, and the hard drives max out below 50C.

Ok, sounds good, what system do you have, and what would you estimate the maw power-draw to be?

AtW

JonV · Post by **JonV** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 12:11 pm

CPU: Athlon64 X2 4200+
Mobo: Asus A8N-SLI Premium
RAM: Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2 2GB
GPU: Gigabyte 7800GT
HDD: 2x Samsung P120 250GB
DVD-RW: NEC ND-3540A
PSU: Antec Phantom 350

So it's fairly high-powered. I'm not sure about power draw numbers, but with the above information you're in as good a position to calculate them as I am.

Apart from the fan in the lower chamber it's all cooled with a single Nexus 120mm at ~6V, btw. That's at idle, ramping up to around 10V under load. The lower chamber one stays at 5.5V permanently, and is inaudible.

ATWindsor · Post by **ATWindsor** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 1:05 pm

Ok, thats like min, just abit more power on every level

So i guess I really should be quite fine then, even with full load, very reassuring. I guess the PSU will turn itself of it gets hot too. At the moment (with 7v and reasonable load), it pretty cool to the touch.

AtW

Ackelind · Post by **Ackelind** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 2:27 am

What hard drives do you have that stay at 50C with a nexus fan just behind them? I've gone from S12 to fanless, and installed a nexus running at 600rpm (around 5V), and my hard drives are currently 37C and 33C. With only the S12's fan, they were around 39-42C.

50C just seem a little bit high.

swaction · Post by **swaction** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 4:38 pm

Does anyone have a couple drives running in the lower chamber of a P180 with one of these Phantom babies?

I've 2x Maxline SATA drives, nexus @ 7v, followed by the Phantom 350 and boy does that sucker heat up. The HDD's are quite warm to touch, even with nice fresh air being sucked over them. The drives are at the maximum distance from each other as allowed by the drive cage...

Anyone else have similar experiences?

JonV · Post by **JonV** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:35 am

swaction wrote:Does anyone have a couple drives running in the lower chamber of a P180 with one of these Phantom babies?

I've 2x Maxline SATA drives, nexus @ 7v, followed by the Phantom 350 and boy does that sucker heat up. The HDD's are quite warm to touch, even with nice fresh air being sucked over them. The drives are at the maximum distance from each other as allowed by the drive cage...

Anyone else have similar experiences?

My setup is similar except that my drives are Samsung P120's, my Nexus is at 5V, and I've padded the drives pretty heavily in a combination of plastic and sound-dampening material. That sounds scary, but I've had it running 24/7 for eight months without any problems whatsoever.

"Warm to the touch" is never a problem for hard drives - you should check the exact temperatures through SMART. My drives are staying below 50C, which I'm happy with, though others will tell you they're not comfortable unless their drives stay below 45C or 40C.

nici · Post by **nici** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:22 pm

Ill try to make this short.. 3700AMB with reserator exhausting heat from CPU,GPU and chipset and nexus at ~500rpm the Phantom was cool to the touch but got pretty warm if i opened the case, even with the same fan at 700-800rpm in the P180 lower chamber with the same HDDs as in the 3700AMB it would get pretty warm. Ambient temp stays around 20-22c around the year inside my room even though outside temps may range from -30c to +30c..

So in my experience the pantom is cooled better in a normal case than in the P180, at least if you have a very low power system or have external cooling.