Overheating problem
 

I have an AMD +2400 processor, two HDD 1 80gb, 1 200gb, as well as a 9800xt vid card.

I keep my computer on a lot, since I like to download torrents. I started noticing the overheating problem, as soon as I replaced a noisy cpu fan that has a fan control switch, for a less noisy silent fan by coolermaster.

So far I have bought a new case, and have installed two additional fans, one on the back of the case and one in the front. Plus I my power supply has two additional fans. However, it still heats ups, and the source seems to be the 200gb HDD. The weird thing is that the 200gb HDD is creating a lot of heat, eventhough I haven't stored anything on it.

Currently I have the side panel open, and that sort of fixes the overheating problem, but leads to another problem concerning dust. What type of tip/advice/products would you recommend from personal experience?

-I tried putting more fans
-I tried keeping the two HDD as close to the front fan as possible
-And recently bought an Aluminum Case by CoolerMaster.

What temperatures are we talking here?

One thing to look at would be your air flow, sucking in air can't do much if it cant get out of the case to move the heat. I was haveing a problem with heat from my hard drives, I move the drive so there was more air space between them and whent with round ide cables, that help alot.

My 3 Maxtor 160 GBs heat up entirely too much from entirely too much idling. I just stuck fans behind the hard drives. My new case (Lian-Li) came with fans installed behind the vertical hard drive mount tray, so my HDs keep relatively cool now. But before that, my 3 hard drives on the lower tray would get almost to the point where it could burn your skin. From idling. Just stick some badass fans on there is all I can suggest. Possibly some heat-dissipation modules that you attach to the HD itself. Other than that, I got nothin'.

Make sure your fans are not blowing towards each other or away from each other, and that your components and cables are as spaced out as possible, especially if you have an AGP card. Make sure your fans are getting a sufficient amount of power, and get a new supply if needed. Air flow should be pretty even throughout the case too, with a little extra oomph where needed.

Ideally, you want an airflow that covers your whole case (5 1/2" drives don't matter). What you'll find in most cases (tee hee, unavoidable pun) is a few fans in the front, a CPU fan, and the power supply. This really isn't a bad setup, as it'll pull air over your hard drives, up past your video card and CPU, then out the back through the PSU. The direction doesn't really matter (front to back or back to front, whatever works best for you) just make sure that you keep it flowing.

Also, even with a good path for the air, your drive may simply be too warm. Look at getting a HD cooler, which is usually two fans designed to mount in a 3 1/2" bay and blow air directly on the drive. They should help to dissipate heat from the drive, which can then be carried away in the overall case airflow.

You can get some cheap (all relative I know) drive cooling systems. They mount in a drive bay (hopefully put one between every 2 drives) and hook up to a molex.

2 small fans, one blows up and one blows down to help cool the drives. I don't have one myself, but I am right on the cusp of requiring one.

I forget where I found them, but I think they were by Thermaltake.

I to would like to know what you call overheating. My system is currently running at 30c on the mobo and 45c on the proc, but i'm also playing city of heroes, posting here, listing to MMO radio on winamp, and its almost 80f out side with no A/C on. my system is xp3000+ 1 gig of ram, 2 wd raptor drives, nvidia 5950u all putting out heat.

The tempreture inside the case is 30c and the processor is 55c, however, if kept on for about more than 45 minutes it will automatically turn off, and reboot. In XP under the power options, I chose to never turn of HDD, monitor, and no system standby.

Yesterday, I decided to wipe everything down, and I set up the PCI cards so that they weren't in adjacent spots. Next I moved the HDD's farther apart from each other. Finally I set up all the cables a little neater. So far it seems to run a lot better. However, when it ran through the POST, I noticed that my CPU was listed as unknown, I hope that isn't a sign of more problems to come. I just need it to hold up, until I upgrade my processor.

Offhand, your HD doesn't sound like the problem, but 55c sounds hot for the processor (mine at full load never runs more than 42c). Did you remove the heatsink when you switched the cpu cooler or just the fan? Perhaps you have bad thermal contact. If you only switched the fans, did you plug the fan into the motherboard or hook it to the fan controller? I've found that coolermaster fans pull more power than can be supplied by the motherboard. If not, perhaps your cpu fan can't pull enough air over the cpu heatsink.

I switched only the cpu fan, and it is plugged in, but it's easy to forget to do that, but usually when my computer goes through the post, it lets me know if the fan is not connected.

Ok, two more questions about the cpu fan. First, how does it recieve its power; connected to the motherboard, through the fan controller you had, or directly to the power supply? Second, what model coolermaster fan did you use to replace the CPU fan with (thinking air intake)?

The cpu receives its power through the motherboard, and fan model is Cooler Master vortex dream 7 CPU Cooler.

Your motherboard might not be providing enough power to the CPU fan. Larger fans like yours (good choice by the way) sometimes pull more juice than the motherboard can provide. If you can connect the fan to the powersupply directly or via voltage controller designed to regulate fans you probably can bring your CPU temp down from 55C by increasing the fan's RPMs.

One other thing, although it may be an obvious question: the Vortex Dream that I looked at had its own fan controller; do you have the fan running at full speed from that controller?

What's the wattage of your power supply?

Theraml paste between the fan heat sink and the processor. AMD is a bitch to keep cool. But get some thermal paste, lightly coat the small brown center section of the processor. Put on heat sink and wiggle around till all the goo is mooshed down.

You shouldn't be worried about 45c. That's not that hot. Check the specs on your CPU manufacturers website, and look for how much heat the CPU can handle. Those hard drives should be set to go idle after a certain amount of time. Hard drives these days don't take long to spin back up. That would reduce the heat a lot.

@Neorate: That's probably it, that the motherboard can't handle it. I should of stuck with the original fan, despite it being too loud, it had a fan controller, and the one I have now doesn't.

@belkins: 400watt power supply, that comes with a total of three fans. I just put this in about 3 or 4 months ago.

@Imhotept: The first fan I first had, came with a small baggie filled with thermal paste, with the new fan, it just had this paper thin layer of paste already applied to it, so it very possible that it wasn't enough.

There are some fan controllers at newegg that look really nice, I found this one http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...999-151&depa=0 which mounts into a free 5.25" bay, monitors system temp and voltage, and recieves power directly from the power supply.

A thin layer of thermal paste is enough to transfer heat from the cpu to the heatsink. Actually I've heard too much increases the temperature the CPU runs at. Cleaning the cpu with salon-grade acetone (100% pure - doesn't have any mosturizers etc, so it wont leave residue), and then applying artic silver thermal paste is the best way to acheive thermal conductance.

just about everyone has talked about the cooling, so I'll chime in on the dust idea. The greatest thing for dust is...The DirtBag!