Cooling question for Dell Precision T5500

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imrazor

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So I got my GTX 670 settled into the T5500, but the temps are a little too hot. At full load GPU temps were hitting 90+ C, so I rearranged some of the PCI cards and got it down to 87C. However, on the GTX 670 throttling is supposed to kick in at around 82C, so I figure I'm losing some performance.

The T5500 actually doesn't have much cooling for a dual CPU system. There's a single 120mm intake in the bottom front and it only has the PSU at the top rear for exhaust. There are 2x80mm brackets in the rear, but they came empty. Even if I populate them, though the extra airflow will only go directly over the RAM and CPU, not the PCIe slots. Would putting two 80mm fans in help the GPU temps at all?
 
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Yeah, I removed the top drive cage on my similar T3500 too. It looks exactly like mine inside. There should be room to mount another 120mm fan in the front. My T3500 has dual front fans and any card I use stays cool.
If the rear looks like this http://www.servermonkey.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/940x587/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/t/5/t5500_3.png
...there should be a 120mm fan mount in the rear. If so, I'd add the front (intake) and the rear (exhaust).
 
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Actually, the back of mine looks like this:

http://images.highspeedbackbone.net/SkuImages/gallery/large/1AS-102372433_gallery03_as_gl_8950730.jpg

So two 80mm fans would go into mine. However, I looked at the motherboard pretty closely and couldn't spot any PWM headers. How do you have all those fans connected? There's only one molex connector on the PSU. I have one 80mm fan lying around, but it only has a 3-pin PWM connector.

I'll try poking around under the front bezel to see about adding a 2nd 120mm intake fan. How much disassembly did you have to do to get it installed?
 
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T3500 and T5500 here too. There should be two 120mm front intakes. The second CPU riser may inhibit direct flow out the back somewhat.

I actually did some smoke tests to test airflow on these. Better than one might think. Air was even being drawn in through the front panel USB headers.

You may be experiencing a dead spot above the card since the factory PSU is fanless. My guess is putting two 80mm intakes in the bottom back would force more air out the top through the PSU.
 
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@Susquehannock That's odd that you say that the PSU is fanless. There's definitely a warm current of air coming out of the back of the PSU. Maybe the 525w in your T3500 is different from my 800w unit?

I'm also going to have to check the front intake. I was pretty sure I only spotted one 120mm fan, but when I get home tonight I'll double check. How are those front intake fans connected to the motherboard?
 
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OK, I made a little progress by sacrificing yet another hard drive. I had a hard drive in the 'flex bay' which, combined with the graphics card, was blocking airflow to the top of the case. Now my GPU temps are running around 82C - 83C. Still high, but at least I'm not throttling. Looks like I'm going to have to live with just one hard drive, which could be an issue. I may be able to mount one in the remaining optical bay without sacrificing too much airflow.

I confirmed that there are 2x120mm fans in the front of the case. A co-worker also suggested putting two 80mm intake fans at the back of the case to force air up and out the PSU. So I'll try to find some 80mm fans w/ Molex connectors and force the air up and out the PSU. I didn't have time for an extensive inspection last night, but I'm pretty sure there's a fan in that PSU.

EDIT: Another suggestion was to block the rear vents with a piece of paper to force airflow up to the top of the case. Any thoughts on that?
 
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OK, yours is the same Dell case design as mine. I thought the pic I found might have been the dual CPU version. I guess a pair of 80mm will work too. I would not have them as intake tho. I would make them exhaust to pull the warm air out of the case. Odd that you even need them, tho. Mine doesn't have any rear fans and temps are great.

My pair of front fans were factory wired; came that way. It appears one directs air flow across the CPU heat sync and one across the RAM thru the shroud.
 
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@clutchc Makes me wonder if there's something wrong with my front fans. They are spinning, but seem to be rotating fairly slowly. No noises from them, so the bearings are probably OK despite their age. The rear exhaust from the PSU is warm, but not particularly toasty. I remember seeing some PCI slot mounted fans a while back. Think that would help more than rear 80mm fans? They'd have to go in the PCI-X slot because almost all the other slots are populated.

Something like this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835888112

or maybe this:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835119065
 
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As a last resort, maybe. But if you doubt your front fans are running fast enough... that may be the problem. I'm not on my T3500 right now to make a comparison, but check in the BIOS to see if there is any option to set the fan speed differently. I can't remember. It's been awhile. If I get back to where I can tear into my T3500 tomorrow, I'll compare the situation closer.
 
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Thanks for the picture. I can't get to my T5500 at the moment; are they standard PWM headers, or Dell proprietary? Would it be possible to use some sort of splitter?

Somewhat unrelated, but do you know if it's safe to remove the RAM shroud? The shroud blocks the bottom graphics slot, at least for a full-length, dual slot card.
 
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Have t3500 and t5500 boards side by side on my bench right now. Except for a few things like the CPU riser headers, and extra chipset cooler, they are almost exactly the same which makes sense since the two cases are identical.

Fans:
When I first got my t3500 the thermal paste was dried out. CPU shot straight up to 100C at full load. After a few minutes the front fans went into hurricane mode. Almost sucked my Cat in through the front grill. So I know they are capable of moving plenty of air.

The fan headers are proprietary 5-pin I believe. There is an extra one labeled "fan hdd" up top by the SATA ports. (pic: http://i.imgur.com/fdsGKbJ.jpg)
Powering an extra case fan from one of the on board USB headers is an option too.


Shroud:
Interesting your graphics card is so close to the RAM shroud. Have a big RX 480 in mine and still have room to spare. Did some test both with, and without the shroud installed. It kept the RAM cooler by a few degrees after heavy sessions, and more importantly, it's presence seems to help direct flow to the board CPU cooler.
 
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That makes me wonder if the problem is the graphics card. I tried removing most of my other PCI cards (including a very hot 7300GS), and it still shot up into the 80s. In my old case, it ran at about 65C under full load BUT I had a 200mm case fan pointing right at it.

I wonder if there are adapters from the proprietary Dell fan headers to traditional 3-pin PWM fan connectors.
 
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Susquehannock makes a good point about the thermal paste. I had forgotten that mine was the same way. All dried out. I replaced it with some MX-4 and the temps are great.
Yes, the fan shroud can go if you want to remove it. I've accidentally left mine out and ran the system gaming with no change in temps that I could discern. But it does help direct the air flow across the RAM sticks.

You can always find replacement Dell fans for the Precision on ebay if you would rather have plug and play Dell fans. http://www.ebay.com/sch/Computer-Case-Fans/131487/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=dell+precision+t5500+fans

Do your CPU heat sinks have the 4 heat pipes like mine or are they the smaller heat sink with no heat pipes?


 
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@clutchc I have the inferior all-aluminum heatsink without heatpipes. However, it seems to cool the CPU adequately. I have the E5620 Xeon, which only generates 80w TDP. IIRC, it hovers around 40C at idle and tops out at around 65C - 70C under load. I am planning to upgrade to a hex-core, though, so the copper heatsink might be a good investment.

@Susquehannock That's a very interesting looking drive bay assembly. Not sure how you'd cram that in, but it might be worth looking into.

When I get home, I'm going to try removing the RAM shroud and see if the GPU cools off some if it's closer to the front fans.
 
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65-70*C is not bad. Bet you could drop that by 30*C or more with the upgraded sink with a80mm fan attached to it. I am maxing out at 41*C with this X5687, 130W TDP.

Very odd your card is running so hot. What are you using? HWmoitor can be glitchy.
 
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Actually made some progress. I removed the RAM shroud, which allowed me to put the GTX 670 is the lowest slot on motherboard, closest to the fans. It also puts an extra slot between the 670 and the 7300GS. Now the temperatures are maxing out at around 75C - 76C after 25 minutes or so of getting slammed at 99% usage by the Witcher 3. I'm still getting a little throttling; at 70C the GPU speed drops from 1215MHz to 1201MHz, but 14MHz doesn't really bother me.

The problem with the lowest slot is that it is only PCI 2.0 x8. However, I'm still getting 45 - 50 fps from the Witcher 3, so it's apparently not causing any throttling.

I'm using MSI Afterburner to monitor temps, clock speeds, etc. Kinda makes sense since the card is an MSI model. This card has a pretty high factory overclock, which might account for some of the high temps I've been seeing.

EDIT: Actually, 75C seems close to normal for this card. In this review, the reviewer got the card up to 70C under load.
 
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Finally got control of my case fans with Speedfan. However, even with all the fans cranked to 100%, Witcher 3 still got my card up to 72C. A 4C improvement isn't worth all the noise...

Another poster in the graphics card forum suggested repasting the card, given that it's a rather old model. Do you think there'd be any benefit?
 
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@clutchc Thanks for that verification. I feel better now. I suspected that after looking at some of the reviews out there, but wasn't sure.

@Susquehannock I got Speedfan working by clicking on the Configure button on the main page, then selecting the Options tab. On that tab, there's a check box that says "Enable DELL support." There's also a warning about only using on laptops, but once I turned it on, I got full control over the case fans. Doesn't seem to hurt anything or cause any instability - unless you do something stupid with your fans and melt your CPU. :)
 
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