Gone Silent

[slvr_phoenix]

I finally went and did it. I laced my Sonata case with the AcoustiPack pre-cut kit. I replaced the Sonata's exhaust fan with a SilenX iXtrema 120mm. And then I did the worst thing of all, replaced the HSF with a Thermaltake SonicTower. So basically, now you can't even hear my PC running.

But I picked a really bad time, since my PC is in the hottest room in my house and summer just hit in full force.

So I've no idea if my CPU temp of 47C at full load is always going to be so high, or if it is just a result of the ambient temp being 34C (93F). (Mobo temp being more like 36C.)

What do you folks think? Is my CPU temp going to drop to something normal (like in the mid 30s) if the temp in the room drops to something more like 24C(76F)? Or is this the price I pay for a fanless CPU and sound damping material?

Granted, everything still runs fine. (Two simul processes of F@H have been maxing out my CPU for a day now and all is still well.) I guess I was just hoping that the big-arsed heatsink would actually do better than the stock one.

But then, my AS5 hasn't had time to set yet. Does anyone that has used AS5 have a good observation on if the temps will drop any after the system has burned in?

<pre><font color=purple>The silence is golden, even if the PC is olden. Fanless P4C2.6 rocks.</font color=purple></pre><p>@ 190K -> 200,000 miles or bust!

 

[Ned_Flanders]

47 full load is acceptable, you arn't going to kil anything.

______________
<font color=green>Mozzartusm for vice-President</font color=green>

 

[dunklegend]

What was the temp before the changes?

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one thath will go wrong first will be the one that will do the most possible damage

 

[slvr_phoenix]

What was the temp before the changes?

I'm assuming you mean CPU temp? With the stock HSF it was about 35-37C at full load. So 10 degrees cooler.

But then the room was also cooler then. :\ I don't know if the increased temps scale linearly to the ambient temp changes or not, and that's what's mostly bugging me.

<pre><font color=purple>The silence is golden, even if the PC is olden. Fanless P4C2.6 rocks.</font color=purple></pre><p>@ 190K -> 200,000 miles or bust!

 

[slvr_phoenix]

47 full load is acceptable, you arn't going to kil anything.

Yeah, I know. I'm not worried about death. I'm more baffled by how much the ambient temperature scales things and I think I'll be a bit miffed if the new gigantic HSF cools worse than the stock HSF, even if it is fanless.

I also wonder what kind of OCing headroom I may still have.

<pre><font color=purple>The silence is golden, even if the PC is olden. Fanless P4C2.6 rocks.</font color=purple></pre><p>@ 190K -> 200,000 miles or bust!

 

[fishmahn]

My PCs are in the corner room of the house, so it gets hot in there even with the AC on. My CPU temp (Atlon XP2600) scales 1:1 with the chassis temp through the range I remember. (i.e. when the chassis is at 30, cpu is 40, when chassis hits 40, cpu hits 50) I don't know what the ambient temp is in those cases (no thermometer in that room) though the system has decent airflow, so I don't know if it really helps you or not...

Mike.

 

[jmwpom3]

Wasn't the point that he was going fanless to nix the noise?

<font color=blue> Failure is not an option -- it comes bundled with Windows. </font color=blue>

 

[Ned_Flanders]

My thoughts too.

______________
<font color=green>Mozzartusm for vice-President</font color=green>

 

[endyen]

Temps usually scale fairly close to linearly. The question still remains though, if your internal temps will be linear to room temps. You may have reduced heat transfer from the case, as well as higher ambient. Worst I would expect is, when winter roles around, your temps may only go down to 42.
Of course, if your room temp goes up another 10c, you might want to worry. Sweat makes keyboards stink.

 

[Unolocogringo]

Place that 120mm fan you removed between the 2 towers and hook it up to 7volts. This will create more air movement over the 2 towers and not increase noise hardly at all.

I aint signing nothing!!!

 

[Ned_Flanders]

and not increase noise hardly at all.

Best. English. Ever.

______________
<font color=green>Mozzartusm for vice-President</font color=green>

 

[Kelledin]

But then the room was also cooler then. :\ I don't know if the increased temps scale linearly to the ambient temp changes or not, and that's what's mostly bugging me.

Generally they do--or at least closely enough as makes no odds. Intel's own thermal design guidelines even rely on that (at least they did before they started telling OEMs it was OK to underspec the cooling on P4s). All other things being equal, the delta between case-ambient and CPU temp should remain fairly constant.

<i>"Intel's ICH6R SouthBridge, now featuring RAID -1"

"RAID-minus-one?"

"Yeah. You have two hard drives, neither of which can actually boot."</i>

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Thanks folks for all the responses. THG may be going to hell, but THG<b>C</b> still rocks.

I was actually considering taking the Antec 120mm smartfan that I have currently as intake and moving it between the two towers of the HSF, and then putting the old Sonata stock exhaust 120mm as the intake fan. I could even hook the stock fan to the PSU's fan-only voltage-controlled molex.

Since the current exhaust fan is actually plugged into the CPU slot and under Asus mobo control, the proposed actual CPU fan would then be self-thermally-controlled, and the intake fan would be PSU-controlled, it would actually mean that all three of the fans are controlled by the CPU/PSU heat. I may get around to that.

I'm also contemplating trying the Sonata-air-channel trick where you cut an intake port into the spare 3.5" bay and mount the intake fan's bottom two holes to the mounting's top two holes. This creates an almost perfectly aligned air channel between the intake and the exhaust then (at the cost of a little HD cooling and having to use screws instead of Antec's rubber fan thingies). But then I'd have to leave the front door open. :\

Well, that or I can try to cut some exhaust holes into the door somewhere so that I can leave the door closed. Which, if I do that, then I might even turn the top 5.25" bay into a vent as well and then install the damping material over the side vents. It'd be strange, and I'll have to dig up my dremel tool, but it could be a fun little project.

Of course I may just be crazy. :O

Anywho, I'm fairly certain that if I take the time to do all of these changes then I'll be running almost as quietly, but will be running noticably lower temps. Then I might even try my hand at OCing this 2.6NWC. I was hesitant to try at 47C, but after changing around the fans and improving the intake it should be okay. It's a thought anyway.

And yet more for noting the bad timing of this upgrade, I couldn't stand this little upstairs room being so damn hot, so I installed a small window AC unit. (That'll teach me to set up my home office in the fall!) So I'm not sure what point there was in making my PC dead silent now anyway, since I have an AC buzzing just a few feet away. :\

The plus side however is that the max CPU temp is now only 40C because the ambient temps have gotten much better. So it seems that it does scale fairly linearly with the ambient temp.

Well, that and I'm no longer dying of heat exhaustion when I do stuff on my PC.

But unfortunately, my mother-in-law from Australia is now visiting for two weeks, so I doubt that I'll have the time or inclination to do any more PC modifications for a while.

<pre><font color=purple>The silence is golden, even if the PC is olden. Fanless P4C2.6 rocks.</font color=purple></pre><p>@ 190K -> 200,000 miles or bust!