Legit Reviews

Hi all sees you have a fairly active site and I have spent a couple hours looking and site seems great. Have a few questions. Firstly here is my current set up:

ASUS Striker Extreme LGA775
Maxtor 7 Y250M0 SCSI Hard drive 230GB
Nvidia Geforce 8800GT XFX 512MB Alpha Dog XXX Edition
Intel Core 2 Dual 6320 @ 1.86Ghz
Aqua Jeantech Gaming Case
2046MB Ram
Standard CPU cooler fan and heatsink

Now my computer components seem to be very getting very hot. My CPU heatsink and especially graphics card (which is brand new) get extremely hot. What would you suggest I do to cool these down? I curently only have 1 12mm fan installed in my case and I have ordered another 3 as my case fits four fans. I also have an extractor fan sitting next to my graphics card in a PCI slot. What would be the best way to cool my PC down? Are water cooler systems the best way to go? Is there a graphics card cooler? and if so what is the best tyoe to get? Should I replace my CPU cooler? I have PC probe II and my stats while running just Windows Explorer are CPU at 53 degees and MB at 47 degrees (not sure how to check the graphics card but it seems hotter than these. I was thinking of buying an ASUS Silent Knight II CPU cooler. Would you recommend this or one better?
Also looking at my spec what would you all think is the best upgrade for my system at the moment? My hard drive seems to make alot of noise during gaming and I am thinking is maybe the best thing to upgrade but I would like all your opinions first.

Thanks for all the help in advance and look forward to your replies.

Rich

The stock CPU coolers stink, they always run on the hot side (go figure if your cpu dies prematurely you buy a new one). Depends on what your budget is as to cooling. The current generally accepted top air cooler is the ThermalRight 120 Ultra, I just ordered one yesterday, their a little hard to find in stock, I found 3 in stock over on http://www.frozencpu.com ran like $54 and you pick your own fan (separately, additional cost). Does a nice job of cooling but it's a honkin big 120mm fan cooler so if you go that way make sure your case will accommodate it.

Water cooling is more expensive, and with the expense comes more risk. If not properly sealed and tested it doesn't take a lot of water spraying around inside a running computer to execute your system. If your set on water a good way to start in the $150 range is the CORSAIR Nautilus 500 and can be seen herehttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835181004. If you want more cooling from the system you can modify the cooling by adding a single,double,or triple radiator and fan(s).

Both of those would take care of your cpu heat.

I have the 8800 gt 512 Alpha Dog, it generally runs about 49C with a slot heat extractor fan. I wouldn't change that until you get your 120mm fans installed, but yes there are after market coolers. Once you increase the air flow in the case it will help with the Mobo and graphics card heat to an extent, more so if you have good cable management. They make water blocks that can fit on the same Corsair water cooling loop you'd be using to cool your CPU if you went that direction. That's a matter better left to the water cooling people. To see an example, look here http://forums.legitreviews.com/about1892.html, Bio-Hazard has his cpu and video watered, you'll see additional passive coolers added to the memory on the video card so it's not just stick a water block on the video card and let it go.

In all I'd get better CPU cooling, install the fans you have coming, re-cable it neatly (if it's not already) and see what that does for temps. As for best upgrade what would your budget be?

One of the best air coolers I have used:

http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ ... s_id=21314

Thanks for the replys so far guys. Water cooling sounds a bit too dangerous maybe.... is it really that difficult to set up? Found some of the Thermalright Ultra120 eXtreme in stock so I guess I'll get this if any other feedback agrees with this. So I guess I'll get my extra 3 fans installed then see about ordering this. As for other upgrades I guess I would just like to know which of my components at the moment are outdated or at least which is the worst. I guess I'm looking in the £100 GBP range to spend maybe more or of course less if possible Any ideas?

One other thing is the ASUS Silent Knight II any good? this one -> http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... pd_luc_mri
or the Zalman 700? -> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-CNPS7000 ... ce_title_2

GBP Means you are from the UK right? So am I ^_^

But were you really posting at 6.30am?!?

Watercooling isn't that dangerous, but it is a lot more effort to install and get up and running. It's not really difficult, just a lot of effort. Then you should clean it out every couple of months too, which is more effort still. And it's pretty expensive compared to air cooling, but the cooling performance is stunning. I wouldn't go back to air, not when i have all this cooling power (and its quiet too as I run my fans on 6v).

If you haven't, you should really try to overclock your CPU. Then your system would be sweet as. Seems to be the general setup of choice round here, and I've yet to make the upgrade to the 8800GT so am slightly behind the curve oh well, I'll get one soon enough.

The UX120 is pretty much the best air cooler available right now, so if you want cool, that is the one to go for. But like Methious said, it is massive so make sure you have the room to fit it.

As for 8800GT coolers, here is a nice roundup [H] did, so pick your price/performance(/and maybe noise) point from there. The best is the THERMALRIGHT HR-03 GT, which goes for £30-40, but like its U120X cousin it also needs a separate fan, but even a low speed/noise one gives great cooling with it.

Dan

Yes I am in the UK and was posting so late as I just got off work Thanks for the great advice again. I did try overclock my CPU as my ASUS Strike Extreme Motherboard has a built in overclock feature which I believe lets me overclock the CPU by upto 20% (if I am reading it correctly.) However doing this causes my system to run extremely hot. I have PCProbe II and when I overclock my machine some of the temps go into the red danger zone (I guess I'll try again when I have installed the rest of 3 x 120mm fans.)
The heatsink for the Geforce 8800GT sit next to the card or must be fit on top? Is this difficult to do if it is the latter?
Guess I will stick with air cooling for now and get a new fan and heatsink for my CPU hopefully this will help some.

Again thanks for the replies so far and any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

I used PC Probe for a while, it was reporting higher temps than I was actually running. The two that run the best for me are Core Temp (1-2 degrees + or - ), and Speed Fan. Mines an AMD system though might be different for you. Mine gets hot when I over clock, that's why I went with the ThermalRight 120 ultra, figured it'd be easier to go real heavy on the cooling and know I have enough, than try to budget out and end up not being able to clock it cause I tried to save 20.

Water does rock for cooling but all the maintenance (and my better half) prevent me from going to it. With air all I do I open it up and blow it out once in a while. Hopefully the cooler will let me clock it up, the x2 6400 puts out a lot of heat under full load.

Thanks Methios for all your help. You seem to know what you are talking about so I think I'll do as you say.

Happy New Year All

OK I have installed 2 80mm fans (3 in my case now) and have installed a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme CPU cooler with a 120mm CPU fan. PCProbe now says my CPU temp is 45 degrees with MB at 40 degrees and Graphics Card at around 35 degrees (although my graphics card feels very hot to touch.) Are these temp's OK or should they be lower? (I think the temp of at least my Graphics Card should be lower it is very hot.) Coretemp shows my cores at 40 degrees.

Also is there a benchmarking tool to tell if my CPU is overclocking? I have ASUS AI Booster and I have set it to run with the NOS feature boostedto 10%. Is there a way of telling just how fast it is running? Not sure myself seems maybe a tad faster but not sure. My 3d Mark 06 score is at 9354 with my CPU score only at 1838. The CPU tests run terribly sluggish. Is there anyway to improve this.

Sorry realise lots of questions just trying to learn

Thanks

If indeed your graphics card is at 35oC then that is actually a very cool running card. Most modern cards run around the fifties (oC) while just sitting doing nothing.

To check temperatures of your card, get and install ntune (i think its a generic all cards program, this is the version it pointed me at to download with a 7950)
http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html. Open the nvidia monitor that installed with it, then click the little "->" button, hey presto, GPU temperatures. This feature has recently been moved to its own app, and i think it sucks, but i digress.

To see what speed your CPU is running at, you can use CPUz. This will tell you in pretty much realtime what speed your CPU is running at (if speedstep is enabled it might be lower than what you are expecting, it will ramp up to full GHz when the core is in use, so don't worry).

Also, CoreTemp is regarded as being the most accurate CPU temperature monitor, so give that a try and report back what that says.

I think the temps for your CPU seem a little high, but it depends on what CoreTemp says, and what voltage/Ghz the core is actually running at. With those temps, I am presuming speedstep is off, or not supported (with the lower end C2D's it isnt needed so intel didnt put it on, but I don't know at what model number they turned it on/off)

Dan

WOW! OK think I'm having problems. Says my CPU is at 52 degrees, my system at 44 degrees and my GPU is at 70 degrees . Hmm suggestions please.

I also downloaded the CPU-Z program but how do I read if my CPU is running overclocked or not? What sort of stats should I be getting?

Just tell us the model number (or confirm it is the E6320 in your sig), and what the core speed is.

PC probe is by ASUS right? If so, it should have a CPU voltage reading somewhere in it, check that too please. If your core speed in CPUz changes when the CPU is under load, then read off the voltage when it is at full speed (if you need something to create some load on your CPU, open up the calculator in windows, set it to scientific and run 100000n, this does a massive calculation that takes forever to finish, so once you have checked if it does/doesn't alter the core speed/cpu voltage you can cancel the program.

The probable reason your CPU is so hot is that you have either a) used too much thermal paste when mounting the CPU cooler, or b) not screwed in the hold down legs in a diagonal pattern, or one of them isn't fully pushed/screwed in (Im not sure offhand how the U120x is mounted, i know it has a backplate though).

Is the cooler on the 8800GT stock? And have you overclocked it any?

Dan

Yes my CPU is a E6320 @ 1.86ghz
In PC Probe it says my Vcore is at 1.42v (if that is what you were asking for.)
In CPU-Z is says my Core Speed is 2238.6Mhz. I tried the calculation and nothing in CPU-Z changed.

I checked my CPU heatsink and I did fit it using the diagonal pattern and all the screws are down properly. ?

My XFX 8800GT is the XXX Alpha Dog 512mb version. I have not changed it in anyway and the overclocking was done by the makers.

The chip running hot is probably due to the voltage.

The AI overclock has put the voltages for your CPU rather high, I would suggest taking them down to stock and manually overclocking. It's more work, but you won't be putting an overly high amount of voltage through your chip (like you are now). Odds are, that you will be able to get to your current overclock with practically no voltage increase, compared to the 10% extra it has dumped on it.

Too much voltage can damage your chip if left in that state for too long, so the sooner you do this the better.

Dan

To give you some idea of the ThermalRight 120 Ultra, I run an Athlon X2 6400, dissipates 165w thermal energy, one of the hottest dual cores out there @ stock due to the 95nm design (more nm more distance, more distance = increased electrical resistance = higher heat). With a cooler nMedia Pc Icetank that I've used on every other dual cpu I've had so far, it ran hot. On the 6400 idle 37-38C under load 55C and climbing. With the ThermalRight it runs 31C idle, 41-42C full load torture test and doesn't go higher.

Like Dan said, reduce the CPU Voltage, on Asus I use AI over clock some times, but after it does the OC I set it to manual (on mine it keeps the same settings when I change it), then I reduce voltages from there. If that doesn't do it I'd re-seat the cpu cooler.

if you want to go air then get either a tuniq tower or a thermalright 120 ultra. they are pretty much the two best air coolers out there

supaduparich wrote:OK I have installed 2 80mm fans (3 in my case now) and have installed a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme CPU cooler with a 120mm CPU fan. PCProbe now says my CPU temp is 45 degrees with MB at 40 degrees and Graphics Card at around 35 degrees (although my graphics card feels very hot to touch.) Are these temp's OK or should they be lower? (I think the temp of at least my Graphics Card should be lower it is very hot.) Coretemp shows my cores at 40 degrees.

You mean like that martini?

Dan

OK I have purchased a Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Graphics Card cooler for my XFX 8800GT. However I had to remove the heatsink and fan my graphics card came with to fit this one on. Seems to have cooled it down loads so far from 70 to 43 degrees (although I have just turned the system on.) I am just worried that this one does not have a fan and because it is an overclocked model it might not be healthy to change the cooler XFX put on the card. Do you think it should be OK? As I said so far after 5-10mins it seems to have done great. I will see if it keeps it up especially after playing a game. At the moment just running the net Nvidia nTune monitor shows my system temps as: CPU 39, System 43, GPU 43. I have however turned off the auto overclock as recommended earlier and as I don't understand overclocking myself have not been brave enough to overclock the CPU myself. A guide would be nice Is there one available? as I am keen to learn how to do it.

Graysky did a rather nice guide just on that subject:
http://forums.legitreviews.com/about10789.html

As for the Accellero; If you have enough fans set to blow air out of your case, i.e. enough to drag air in from the back of the case (where the PCI grill bracket is over the S1) then you will have no problems. You could even ghetto mod (with something like ducttape) a fan onto the heatsink if you want. The S1 is an amazing cooler to say it is passive, couple it with active cooling and you have a winner.

Dan

DMB2000uk wrote:

supaduparich wrote:OK I have installed 2 80mm fans (3 in my case now) and have installed a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme CPU cooler with a 120mm CPU fan. PCProbe now says my CPU temp is 45 degrees with MB at 40 degrees and Graphics Card at around 35 degrees (although my graphics card feels very hot to touch.) Are these temp's OK or should they be lower? (I think the temp of at least my Graphics Card should be lower it is very hot.) Coretemp shows my cores at 40 degrees.

You mean like that martini?

Dan

you win this time, ill get you eventually, dont worry