Cooling Your Overclocked Computer!
Jan 21 '01
The Bottom Line Cooling is everything. And some cooling solutions definitely have a bigger effect than others.
This article focuses more on the methods of cooling I have found helpful for my overclocked computer.
What I have:
566 Celeron-2 FCPGA @ 850 Mhz
Abit Slocket III adapter
Abit BX-6 Rev 2.0 motherboard
2 64 Meg PC-100 Micron Cas 2 SDRAM
1 128 Meg PC-133 Kingston Cas 3 SDRAM
Asus V3400 TNT AGP video Card
Creative Labs PCI 128 sound card
Iomega ZipCD 12x4x32 CD-Writer (check out my review!)
Mitsumi 48x CD-Rom
IBM 15 Gig ATA-100 7200 RPM harddrive
Western Digital 6.4 Gig 5400 RPM harddrive
generic Lucent 56K modem
generic 10/100 network card
I am running the CPU at 850 mhz (8.5 multiplier x 100 mhz bus speed). My CPU usually is about at 35 degrees C, but my case temperature is at 40+ degrees C easy. I think the case temperature was the source of my problem when my computer would spontaneously reboot while playing Quake 3. So I set out to cool my computer even more.
CPU Cooling
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I didn't want to lose any SDRAM slots by using a large Alpha cooler or GlobalWin FOP-32 or FOP-38 coolers as my friend's computer did. So, I had gone with the Thermaltake Golden Orb cooler, and my cpu temperature was a nice and cool 35 degrees C. The Golden Orb gives good bang for the buck even though Alpha and other large coolers will give a slightly lower temperature. It's either $11 for the Golden Orb or $20-$30 for the larger fans.
To facilitate further cooling of my computer, I bought a copper shim and a tube of Arctic Silver thermal compound. The copper shims fit over the face of the FCPGA CPU, and it helps to distribute heat to the heatsink over a wider surface area. Arctic Silver is purported to be some of the best thermal paste available. Overall, my new CPU temperature was about 32 degrees C. So for about $15 (copper shim and thermal compound), I dropped the CPU temperature by about 3 degrees. I still don't know if I would recommend this upgrade, but read on.
Video Card Cooling
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Surprisingly, my old TNT card was a source of quite a lot of heat even though there was a factory heatsink and fan on the GPU. I decided to utilize a Blue Orb chipset cooler to bring down the temperature of my card. My video card had push pins installed from the factory fan, so installation was easy. The video card was slightly cooler to the touch, but I have no hard temperatures. If you're going to overclock your video card, I would recommend this fan. And plus, the blue heatsink looks cool. =)
Harddrive Cooling
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Heat is purported to be the #1 cause of harddrive failures, and after upgrading to a 7200 RPM harddrive, I decided to go try out a harddrive cooler. The one I purchased has a spring loaded heatsink that touches the top of the harddrive, and there are 3 small fans that blow across the heatsink and harddrive. It comes at an expense of a 5.25" bay, but it's kept my harddrive cool. My old Western Digital actually generates more heat than my heatsinked IBM harddrive. I think this is a very good cooling solution for $20.
Case Fans
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I purchased the Card Cooler XT to help cool my case. The Card Cooler XT is composed of two VERY large 120 mm ball bearing fans that sit over your PCI cards, CPU, and memory. I'm going to go straight to the results where my case temperature now sits at 26 degrees C, and my CPU temperature is 22 degrees C!!! With heavy gaming, the case temperature might reach 29 C and the CPU temperature 25 C. But the cooling achieved with the Card Cooler XT is absolutely amazing! I was even able to push my CPU up to 894 mhz after the cooling! I'm going to next try to lower the CPU voltage to see how it runs. This upgrade is a little pricey at $35, but you could probably forgo some of the above upgrades and just use this one. The fans adequately blows enough air strongly enough to cool most of the case.
Other things to facilitate cooling
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You probably notice the bunch of power cords, IDE cables, audio cables causing some traffic in your case. What I like to do is to use plastic ties to hold your wires together and to take up slack in the cables. Less cable traffic = better cooling. And another thing you can do is (I hold no responsibility if you destroy your IDE cables doing this) to use an x-acto knife to cut slits in your IDE cables (not on the wire of course) so you can fold your IDE cables and make them even more streamlined. I've seen several places sell these as "rounded IDE cables." This just facilitates airflow through your case. =)
Just my 2 cents. Email me if you want more information about the products I used.
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drpooh03
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Med student in lubbock but Longhorn at heart... Hook 'em!
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