AMD based major upgrade/silence

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martineyles
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AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by martineyles » Mon Apr 13, 2009 10:01 am

I currectly have the PC shown in the images below. I would like to upgrade this and make it quieter at the same time. I intend to keep the same case (which has front USB, Firewire and audio sockets), drives (drive noise doesn't yet annoy me) and PSU (Mine is 350W, and quite quiet).

My intention is to buy an AMD 5050e processor and a Scythe Ninja 2 heatsink, and pair this with a Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate (passively cooled) graphics card. I can now get all of these from ebuyer in the UK, and any other parts will also need to be available in the UK (but not necessarily from ebuyer).

I need to therefore choose a new motherboard suitable for these components, and some memory too (I reckon 2GB is about the amount to go for - I intend to get another copy of XP if the current OEM licence doesn't work on the new motherboard).

Requirements for the Motherboard:

USB 2 headers (2 for the front, and maybe one for a memory card reader)
Decent Audio (preferably something that plays nice with HDCP, in case I eventually cave in an go bluray, but more importantly something that sounds good in stereo, as I connect it to my hi-fi)
Ethernet (wireless would be nice, as it would be easier to deal with than my current USB solution)
P/S2 Keyboard socket (but don't need one for the mouse - it's USB)
Ability for the motherboard to control fan speeds (CPU and Case Fan).
Something that doesn't foul on the intended coolers
(Firewire header would be nice for the front socket, but not essential)
(Bluetooth is also a nice to have, but not essential)

I intend to put the GPU in the top slot, and move the case fan to the lower position, so that it draws air over the heatsink as well as from the CPU. The case fan will also need replacing, as the one I have is a bit too noisy.

I'd appreciate any help in choosing the remaining components and any thoughts on my planned layout.

Thanks,
Martin

PS, tried showing picture of the PC, but won't let me do that on a first post. Will try again later.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:32 am

This is to allow me to post an image...

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:33 am

the images will be in the next post, I hope.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:33 am

Image
Image

speedkar9
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by speedkar9 » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:37 pm

martineyles wrote:Requirements for the Motherboard:
USB 2 headers (2 for the front, and maybe one for a memory card reader)
Decent Audio (preferably something that plays nice with HDCP, in case I eventually cave in an go bluray, but more importantly something that sounds good in stereo, as I connect it to my hi-fi)
Ethernet (wireless would be nice, as it would be easier to deal with than my current USB solution)
P/S2 Keyboard socket (but don't need one for the mouse - it's USB)
Ability for the motherboard to control fan speeds (CPU and Case Fan).
Something that doesn't foul on the intended coolers
(Firewire header would be nice for the front socket, but not essential)
(Bluetooth is also a nice to have, but not essential)
A board based on AMD's 780G might fit the bill nicely, except no wireless. Most new Asus boards only allow for the control of PWM fans, which aren't that great anyways. Gigabyte supports 3/4 pin fans, so they might have better fan control.
martineyles wrote: I intend to put the GPU in the top slot, and move the case fan to the lower position, so that it draws air over the heatsink as well as from the CPU. The case fan will also need replacing, as the one I have is a bit too noisy.
A case outfitted with a 92 or even better a 120mm exhaust fan would be ideal for a passively cooled video card, your 80mm might not cut it. In that case you might want to consider an additional intake fan or something that can blow directly on the video card. While your at it, remove those restrictive rear grills, and see if you can open a hole up front to have an air intake.
I'm also assuming your 350W PSU has enough amperage on the 12V rail to power the new video card (and not cause the fan to ramp up due to the power demand).

theycallmebruce
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Post by theycallmebruce » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:58 pm

Seems like the only original bits will be the case, PSU and disks right? If the budget allows, I'd suggest you get a new case (to fit bigger fans), PSU, and some quiet 120mm fans.

This will probably make a big difference to the overall noise level. As speedkar pointed out, you may well find your PSU can't power the new video card anyway.

As a side note, given how cheap RAM was last time I looked, I'd personally go for 4GB. It shouldn't cost much more at all.

martineyles
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by martineyles » Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:47 pm

speedkar9 wrote: A board based on AMD's 780G might fit the bill nicely, except no wireless. Most new Asus boards only allow for the control of PWM fans, which aren't that great anyways. Gigabyte supports 3/4 pin fans, so they might have better fan control.
Thanks, it's a complete maze in motherboard - each manufacturer seems to make about a million different boards! (and there's a fair few manufacturers). One other query, re the wireless end. Do motherboard manufacturers still follow the practice of using the chipset, but then adding addition chips for other features, such as sound, raid, wireless, or are these now generally dealt with by the chipset itself?
speedkar9 wrote: A case outfitted with a 92 or even better a 120mm exhaust fan would be ideal for a passively cooled video card, your 80mm might not cut it. In that case you might want to consider an additional intake fan or something that can blow directly on the video card. While your at it, remove those restrictive rear grills, and see if you can open a hole up front to have an air intake.
I'm also assuming your 350W PSU has enough amperage on the 12V rail to power the new video card (and not cause the fan to ramp up due to the power demand).
Re: graphics/PSU, I chose the 4670 because it has a reputation of low power draw (and has no additional power connectors). I have previously had a graphics card that did have power connection (although it died recently), and ATI 9800, but this was an AGP card, so maybe it gets less power through the motherboard. Bearing that in mind, do you think this would still be likely to make the PSU struggle still (I can check model etc. if that helps)? BTW, The PSU isn't actually original, the original was smaller still at 300W, and died also (but a loooooong time ago). I can budget for a new PSU, just didn't want to waste the old one, feels a shame to throw it away.

Re: the case. I quite like the case, and was thinking "waste not, want not" (again). If it's not going to cut it, fair enough, but I had hoped it might. I can't add a fan at the front BTW - the mounting points are actually in front of a solid perspex wall, so wouldn't do anything. If changing case, perhaps you can suggest something that will do the job well, and appeal to my own sense of style - something simple, but good material, with front USB and none of those annoying doors - want to actually access my drives.
theycallmebruce wrote:As a side note, given how cheap RAM was last time I looked, I'd personally go for 4GB. It shouldn't cost much more at all.
I thought that although there is a theoretical 4GB limit, 32bit OSes actually struggle with the last 1GB, giving you 3GB to actually use. Is this still beneficial?

speedkar9
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by speedkar9 » Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:04 pm

martineyles wrote: Do motherboard manufacturers still follow the practice of using the chipset, but then adding addition chips for other features, such as sound, raid, wireless, or are these now generally dealt with by the chipset itself?
No, these are still controlled by separate chips.

Check the brand name, model, and 12v rail amperage and wattage ratings. I'm going to randomly guess and say that 18-20A *might* be sufficient enough for the 4670-- others please chime in.

That case would be sufficient if you were running a basic system with onboard graphics- however adding a passive GPU in there would add alot of heat in the case. If your into modding, I suppose you could cut an intake hole in the front. If not, cheap and quiet case/ PSU choices might be the Antec NSK3480 (w/380W PSU), or the Antec SOLO or maybe even a Three Hundred.

Looking at your pic, I'm guessing your currently running a Socket A, Athlon XP chip, DDR RAM, and ATI 9800 AGP video card. Since none of the components can be reused, you could perhaps sell the system to offset the price of the new case/psu.

True the 3GB limit exists with 32 bit OS's, if your on XP, you'd probably not use past 2GB anyways. However with the price of DDR2- I'd say go for the full 4GB.

martineyles
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by martineyles » Wed Apr 15, 2009 2:13 am

speedkar9 wrote:Check the brand name, model, and 12v rail amperage and wattage ratings. I'm going to randomly guess and say that 18-20A *might* be sufficient enough for the 4670-- others please chime in.
The PSU is a Sweex 350 Watt Gold
http://www.sweex.com/communicatie.php?s ... 4&detail=s
Looking at the specs, most of the power is dedicated to 3.3v and 5v lines, leaving only 12 Amps of currecnt on the 12 volt line. So, from what you've suggested, it won't manage and I will need a new PSU.
speedkar9 wrote:That case would be sufficient if you were running a basic system with onboard graphics- however adding a passive GPU in there would add alot of heat in the case. If your into modding, I suppose you could cut an intake hole in the front.
Nope, not really into modding that much
speedkar9 wrote:Looking at your pic, I'm guessing your currently running a Socket A, Athlon XP chip, DDR RAM, and ATI 9800 AGP video card. Since none of the components can be reused, you could perhaps sell the system to offset the price of the new case/psu.
Pretty much on the money there - it was the 9800 till recently, but since that broke it's the cheapest thing I could find, as a temporary fix, an NVidia FX5000 series. As for not reusing components, I think at this rate, only the floppy and DVD ROM will be original (The writer is an upgrade). I may struggle suggesting to MS that this meets my current OEM licence, when calling to reactivate XP. :wink:
speedkar9 wrote:True the 3GB limit exists with 32 bit OS's, if your on XP, you'd probably not use past 2GB anyways. However with the price of DDR2- I'd say go for the full 4GB.
OK, as long as it won't cause any compatibility issues, I'll take your advice on this.
speedkar9 wrote:If not, cheap and quiet case/ PSU choices might be the Antec NSK3480 (w/380W PSU), or the Antec SOLO or maybe even a Three Hundred.
I'll take a look at the case and let you know what I think.

theycallmebruce
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Post by theycallmebruce » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:44 am

+1 on the 300, I just bought one and I'm very happy with it. I've never had such a well constructed case before, but it's not ridiculously expensive - actually cheaper than the Solo where I live.

martineyles
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by martineyles » Wed Apr 15, 2009 9:13 am

martineyles wrote:
speedkar9 wrote:If not, cheap and quiet case/ PSU choices might be the Antec NSK3480 (w/380W PSU), or the Antec SOLO or maybe even a Three Hundred.
I'll take a look at the case and let you know what I think.
Having looked at the cases, I like the SOLO/Sonata Plus 550/Sonata Designer 500 best.

I think the Designer 500 would probably go best with my white DVD writer, assuming I can remove the fake doors on the top two and just have the fronts of the drives straight on.

http://www.antec.com/Believe_it/product.php?id=MTEyNw==

speedkar9
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Re: AMD based major upgrade/silence

Post by speedkar9 » Wed Apr 15, 2009 3:05 pm

martineyles wrote:I think the Designer 500 would probably go best with my white DVD writer, assuming I can remove the fake doors on the top two and just have the fronts of the drives straight on.
Depending on your degree of silencing, the included Earthwatts 500 PSU may or may not be quiet enough (by SPCR standards). Nevertheless, the PSU is still good value (especially when bundled with the case), and even better if you do a fan swap.
Do consider a 92mm intake fan to aid the passive video card if temps get to high. I've got one exhaust fan in my SOLO @ 700RPM and it manages to keep my 8600GT passive at 90*C load.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Wed Apr 15, 2009 4:56 pm

This is a list of the bits that I think I need then, with prices from one store (ebuyer).

Code: Select all

Antec Sonata Designer - With 500W EarthWatts PSU - Interchangable Colour Front Panels 	 £132.94
Scythe Ninja II with 120mm fan Heatpipe Socket 478, 775, 939, 940, AM2 Processor Cooler 	£36.47
AMD Athlon X2 5050e Socket AM2 45W Energy Efficient Retail Boxed Processor 	             £51.97
Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate Edition 512MB GDDR3 HDMI DVI VGA PCI-E Graphics Card 	         £71.42
Crucial 4GB (2X2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Ballistix Memory 	                              £44.99
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition-SP3/SP2- Licence and media - 1 PC - OEM - CD - English   £69.99
Antec Tricool 92mm Case Fan - 3/4pin connector 	                                          £4.54
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 770 Socket AM2+ 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard 	                £67.80
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cart total inc vat:                                                                       £480.12
I think I would start with the included PSU, and change it later if necessary.

I think the memory I chose is the fastet clock speed that is supported by the processor. I chose as low a latency as I could (4ms).

Chances of not having issues with the windows licence are slim, so added a copy of that too - This will also mean I can keep the old kit working as a windows machine, rather than having to break it or make it a linux box. (Still, it won't be very good, as it will only have a CD/RW, no DVD and no floppy, plus two big holes as I don't have any more face plates for the bays)

Can't find any of the recommended fans in this shop, so have put in an Antec Tricool for now - see, it even matches the case.

The Motherboard is based on the AMD 770 / AMD SB700 chipset combo, and appears to be passively cooled. From what I can tell, the difference with the 780G is that there are no onboard graphics, but apparently hybrid crossfire doesn't work with 46xx series cards anyway, only 44xx cards. Still no WiFi, but can't see it on many motherboards, so will just have to stick with the USB adapter I have for that.

My main concern is that the Ninja fits, as in the review of the case on here, it says
One potential issue might be the tight clearance between the motherboard and the PSU. The P150 is fairly short, in fact its only about 1/2" taller than the Sonata series. There's approximately 3/8" clearance between the top edge of the board and the bottom of the PSU. CPU heatsinks that overhang the board by more than this will have problems. The XP-120 that I used had a bit of clearance, but there was virtually no clearance between the fan mounting clips and the PSU.
But it fitted with the board they used (see page 6 of the review), so hopefully it will with this one.

Is there anything I've missed here? Do you have any further comment on the components? Do the prices seem about right, or do I need to shop around a bit more - anyone know of a good UK shop/website?

Thanks for everyone's thoughts so-far; it's been very useful.

speedkar9
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Post by speedkar9 » Wed Apr 15, 2009 6:29 pm

martineyles wrote:

Code: Select all

Antec Sonata Designer - With 500W EarthWatts PSU - Interchangable Colour Front Panels 	 £132.94
Ok, to put this into my perspective, UK £132.94 = 240.049812 Canadian dollars- OMG!
The same case/PSU goes for $147 CAD over here.....
martineyles wrote: Can't find any of the recommended fans in this shop, so have put in an Antec Tricool for now - see, it even matches the case.
You might be sorry- Tricools are kinda loud by SPCR standards... maybe you can get away without an intake for now, you can always order one later. :)
Not a bad choice on the mobo- looks like you've got alot of fan headers to experiment with cooling.
BTW, since your upgrading your OS, why don't you go with the x64 version of XP, or better yet 64 bit Vista? At least you'd be able to run your full 4GB's of RAM.
Also- is it cheaper to purchase the regular 512mb Sapphire 4670 and stick an Accelero on there? I think it would offer better cooling.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Thu Apr 16, 2009 1:47 pm

I've looked for the recommended 92mm fans from UK pages in google search, and might be able to get either the Nexus or Noiseblocker fans. Shops I'm looking at are

kustompcs.co.uk
specialtech.co.uk
custompc.co.uk
epcbuyer.com
thecoolingshop.com

Does anyone in the UK (maybe someone from round here is lurking) have any experience with these companies?

Anyway, I will check the fans in these places, but will also see how they do on the other components. Never know, might get something a bit closer to Canadian prices (I hope).

I'll update once I've looked through them all.

-----------

Re: 64 bits. I think 64 bits is nice and elegant in theory, but I fear compatibility issues with old software and lesser known software. Also, I still don't really see the benefit of Vista, except in making the computer run slower, and in fact, I hate WMP11, and you can't get WMP10 going in vista. I think all my games are DX9 based (Things like Halflife 2 and star wars lego could do with some more poke, but Sim city is fine) or before (some even mention windows 95/98 on the boxes). Got codecs for video and DVD playback sorted too, and just generally get along with XP, but new hardware kit will help with HD stuff (not blu-ray, but you-tube and my camera). Sorry, rambling now.

nutball
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Post by nutball » Fri Apr 17, 2009 12:56 am

martineyles wrote: kustompcs.co.uk
specialtech.co.uk
I've bought from both of these without any problems.

Take a look at scan.co.uk too, I just did a quick tally and shaved about £45 off the ebuyer total (though scan don't sell any decent 92mm fans).

Don't worry too much about memory latency - unless you're overclock/benchmark obssessed it's not worth paying more than a few pennies for lower latency.

edh
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Post by edh » Fri Apr 17, 2009 1:31 am

Scan have given me nothing but problems in the past. Their customer service is appalling.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Sat Apr 18, 2009 3:03 am

I checked, and realised that custompc is actually a magazine review, but the others are shops. Only Kustom and Specialtech have fans in stock, with specialtech being cheaper (both excluding and including vat & delivery). Overall, this will cost me an extra £5 over the Antec fan roughly. The Fan is the SPCR Recommended Nexus 92mm.

Re: low latency ram - the price difference was small enough not to worry about, so I'll probably stick with it.

Epcbuyer can save me just under £30 on the total, but as no-one has used them will have to decide on the gamble. Not checked scan yet, but also have to decide on wether worth the risk, based on mixed experience.

I will also check Amazon, in case they sell any of this. I've had good experiences with them on other items.

I'm ok on budget, but if anyone has anymore suggestions for good UK stores let me know.

martineyles
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Ordered

Post by martineyles » Mon May 25, 2009 11:47 pm

Placed my order now - went with a mix of Amazon and ebuyer. Also, changed the OS to XP Media Centre 2005. Will post pics when I build it.

martineyles
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oops

Post by martineyles » Wed May 27, 2009 12:51 pm

Realised that I ordered a 120mm fan instead of a 92mm fan. Think I'll keep it to replace the tri-cool one on the back. Managed to also order the correct 92mm fan for the front.

I could actually end up with rather a lot of spare fans - the case one, and a spare they put in (due to some manufacture issue), the one from the CPU stock cooler, and if I run the Ninja in passive mode, yet another one.

Quite a few of the bits have arrived, just waiting on the Motherboard, Graphics Card and Nexus Fans.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Fri Sep 18, 2009 4:33 pm

PC has been built a while, and performs brilliantly in most tasks.

However, in 3D it has a tendency to overheat. Any thoughts?

I hope to be able to put some pics of the new pc up soon, if that helps.

Hezu
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Post by Hezu » Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:16 am

martineyles wrote:PC has been built a while, and performs brilliantly in most tasks.

However, in 3D it has a tendency to overheat. Any thoughts?

I hope to be able to put some pics of the new pc up soon, if that helps.
Pictures sure might help, but even quick recap of the final setup in list form could do the trick. In any case, the general advice to avoid overheating would be to check that there is enough airflow in the case.

martineyles
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New Pictures

Post by martineyles » Sat Sep 19, 2009 2:26 am

Cablegami? This is the cable tidy area of the case
Image
Floppy (used to install SATA drivers, and look at files on old disks), Optical and Hard Disk Drives. I installed a new 1TB Western Digital Green Power Drive for my photos - The old drive was running out of room - Needed it to fit my holiday pics on, and in fact, to fit these pictures of the PC on too. This also shows the 92mm front fan I installed.
Image
Hard-drives, internal view. My floppy disk cable (the blue ribbon cable) is a little short - can't send it to the back of the tray and bring it back in by the floppy drive. Is it possible to get longer cables for this? Any recommendations?
Image
Main heatsinks. CPU heatsink is as far as I can tell doing fine. I have set both the front and rear fans as case fans so far (I took the view that, as long as the case is not over temperature, the heatsink can remove enough heat from the CPU) - is this sensible? Also, any thoughts on how to get better airflow on the GPU? I think the current airflow is going the wrong way for the fins, and was thinking about some up/down airflow perhaps being the solution?
Image
Front of the case. Quite like the way the case matches the optical drive. Just a shame that the floppy drive isn't a little whiter to match. Don't worry about the precarious balancing - that was just too allow me to take the next pic, round the back.
Image
Rear of case, showing new bluetooth dongle. Oh, and a sneaky view of one of my "PC Speakers"
Image[/img]

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:24 am

Hezu wrote:Pictures sure might help, but even quick recap of the final setup in list form could do the trick.
I've posted the pics now, but here's a summary of what's in the PC anyway.

Antec Sonata Designer Case
500W EarthWatts PSU (came with case)
Nexus 120mm fan (rear of case, case fan header on motherboard - replacement for fan included with case)
Nexus 92mm fan (front of case, secondary case fan header on motherboard - positioned to blow between hard-disks)
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 770 Socket AM2+ 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
AMD Athlon X2 5050e Socket AM2 45W Energy Efficient Processor
Scythe Ninja II Processor Cooler (without fan installed)
Sapphire HD 4670 Ultimate Edition 512MB GDDR3 HDMI DVI VGA PCI-E Graphics Card
Crucial 4GB (2X2GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Ballistix Memory
Sony DVD/RW drive (DRU-700A)
Unknown Brand 3.5" Floppy Drive
Hitachi SATA HDD - 250GB (HDT725025VLA3 SCSI Disk Device)
Western Digital Green Power HDD - 1TB (WDC WD10 EACS-00D6B1 SCSI Disk Device)

Bluetooth and WiFi are external USB devices

I also have 3 spare 120mm fans (but no spare 92mm fans) - one that came with the CPU cooler, and two tricool fans that came with the case.

OS is Microsoft Windows XP Media Centre 2005

One more random question springs to mind. I inherited a USB Freeview tuner. It works in its own software, but its drivers are not media centre certified. Is there any hack available to make it work in the windows media centre?
Hezu wrote:In any case, the general advice to avoid overheating would be to check that there is enough airflow in the case.
Just wondering, is there any way to "see" the airflow, like they do in wind tunnels? I was thinking, putting perspex in place of the side panel temporarily, and some coloured gas, then filming, but not sure if this is actually achievable, or where I'd get the perspex or gas from.

psiu
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Post by psiu » Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:29 am

You can get longer as well as rounded floppy cables.

You could set up the airflow with separate zones for the power supply and then the rest of the case. Then maybe add a baffle to force some of the air down by the video card before it goes up by the CPU and exhausted by the case fan.

JamieG
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Post by JamieG » Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:01 pm

Some random thoughts:

- see if you can run the floppy cable under the motherboard (i.e. between the motherboard and the tray), as you are using a flat cable this could be possible.
- open up some of the PCI slot covers underneath the graphics card. This should help by allowing some air to be pulled in from this area by the rear exhaust fan.
- try cutting out all of the fan grills as well, which may help increase airflow slightly.
- maybe try moving whichever of your HDDs runs cooler to the bottom of the three suspension mount slots, so that the top mount is not filled by a HDD blocking some of the airflow towards your graphics card. (You might have to add a second Nexus fan if your HDDs get too hot though).

Also, while this isn't really an airflow improvement (more of a quiet-ness improvement), you could move your DVD drive down to just about the floppy drive, pop out the remaining drive bay covers and duct your PSU to the front of your case by using some vented DVD bay covers.

Finally, if you're still having stability problems, you might just have to bit the bullet and strap another fan on whichever component is overheating (GPU or CPU).

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Post by CA_Steve » Sun Sep 20, 2009 5:51 am

martineyles wrote:PC has been built a while, and performs brilliantly in most tasks.

However, in 3D it has a tendency to overheat. Any thoughts?

I hope to be able to put some pics of the new pc up soon, if that helps.
It's always good to go from a qualitative statement to a quantitative statement when debugging these things. What does "tendency to overheat" mean? Is it a BSOD? Are there screen artifacts in 3d? Is it auto-rebooting? What are the measured temps? Is this a recent problem or one that you've been dealing with for months since the rebuild? Are all components at stock speeds or are you overclocking?

If you can give us a rundown on the idle temps, load temps, how you are measuring these temps, and conditions, we can do a better job of helping you debug.

martineyles
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Post by martineyles » Sun Sep 20, 2009 10:53 pm

CA_Steve wrote:It's always good to go from a qualitative statement to a quantitative statement when debugging these things. What does "tendency to overheat" mean? Is it a BSOD? Are there screen artifacts in 3d? Is it auto-rebooting? What are the measured temps? Is this a recent problem or one that you've been dealing with for months since the rebuild?
I have been observing corruption in the image after playing 3D games for some time. Whilst playing half-life 2, this has been immediately followed by ATI GPU recover kicking in and stopping the game. I have looked at the ATI Overdrive panel, to see the temperature going from high, back down to its idle temperature. I observed this a couple of months ago. I didn't get the peak temperature, just noted that it seemed high, but recovered to low reasonably quickly

When I reported the issue, I had been playing sim city 4, which I think has a more modest 3d load. It got to a point where I got screen artefacts, followed by a screen containing just stripes, but ATI GPU recover didn't kick in at all, so I was forced to reboot the machine. I was therefore unable to get a reading on the temperature.

As Sim City 4 runs in a window, I was able to keep the software open to monitor temperature after reporting this issue. Firstly, at idle the temperature is 40 degrees. When playing Sim City 4, the temperature now seems to rise to only 45 degrees and stay there. Also, since monitoring the temp, it hasn't crashed. Therefore, I'm not sure what caused the Sim City crash. I know that Sim City 4 is a lot cooler for the GPU than Half-Life 2, but I haven't worked out how to get a half-life like load on the chip whilst logging temperature.
CA_Steve wrote: Are all components at stock speeds or are you overclocking?

If you can give us a rundown on the idle temps, load temps, how you are measuring these temps, and conditions, we can do a better job of helping you debug.
I am running the GPU at stock speed (I think). The only way it won't be, is if the GPU is factory overclocked. Looking in the control panel for ATI Overdrive, we have

ATI Radeon HD 4670 [DPRO750SB]
Enable ATI Overdrive, Ticked but greyed out
GPU Clock 750MHz - greyed out
Memory Clock 873MHz - greyed out
Current Value - GPU Clock 165MHZ
Current Value - Memory Clock 250MHz
Temperature 39 degress
Activity 0%
Fan Speed 12% (odd, there is no fan)

Tempertaures
Idle - 40 degrees (healthy I assume)
Sim City 4 - 45 degress (also healthy)
Half-Life 2 - much higher, but not proper reading

I think perhaps, to be more scientific, it would be good to get some software that can put load on the GPU and log the temperature as it goes. Can you suggest anything?

Many Thanks,
Martin

martineyles
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Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2009 2:02 pm
Location: UK

Post by martineyles » Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:02 pm

Just read your sig.
CA_Steve wrote:At the wall: 115W idle, 150W gaming (WoW), Prime95+Furmark 260W.
I think I'll be downloading Furmark.

I would be quite nice to get an at-the-wall power reading too - might investigate some appropriate hardware through plug power monitor at some point, but I think stability first.

I'll let you know how I get on with Furmark.

edh
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Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:49 pm
Location: UK

Post by edh » Mon Sep 21, 2009 12:23 am

martineyles wrote:I think perhaps, to be more scientific, it would be good to get some software that can put load on the GPU and log the temperature as it goes. Can you suggest anything?
Speedfan can pick up most GPU temps. It may not be named so you may have to identify it by comparing temps with what the ATi control panel says. You may also have to correct for an offset in temperature between the two.

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