question about PC running hot -room humidity and water coolance system

[mazinz]

I custom built pc a few months back (Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz, 4 gigs ram, MSI motherboard, rocket fish universal cpu cooler: rf-ucpucf, and a black widow power supply).

Everything has been ok until yesturday. I use the free program speedfan to monitor the temp in this thing. This pc usually runs 45-48c. Yesturday I noticed the core temp going up past 50 (around 55-56c, right now as I am typing it is 51 and possibly going to go up).

Now the pc has been dusted (compressed air can) and the thermal grease should still be ok.

So the really dumb question (and obvious, but it could be a coincidence) can room humidity from the weather outside affect the pc and this is why I am seeing the temp going up like it is?

I am in NY and for the past 3 days we have had a nasty heat wave of the temps going into the 80's. This would be ok except for the like 79% humidity coming with it which then makes it hotter.

I want to be sure that my pc is ok and not suffering an internal problem. All of the fans in the pc are working fine

Would the outside weather be to blame for this current computers temp to raise like that? I am afraid of it overheating because of it. This brings me to me next question

I hear they are good, but I also hear a lot of nightmare stories about the water coolance systems for the pc leaking. I was thinking of upgrading to one of those but I am not so sure if it would be a good idea

any suggestions are very welcome

[poisondeathray]

You get about 1.4-1.6 degree increase in cpu load temp for every degree increase in ambient temp around the range of normal room temperature. So if your room temp has gone up a few degrees, that can easily explain your observation.

The important value to look at is how far away you are from the TJMax, you can determine this with coretemp or realtemp. Assuming your readings are correct (ie. assuming your sensors work properly, you should really use an external thermal laser to measure and correlate/calibrate), you are fine around you current range, as Intel specs those for ~100-105 so lots of headroom

All water cooling loops can leak. Rule #1 is you should test thoroughly before running them. Even water cooling relies on the ambient temps, so if your room temp goes up, the water temps go up as well. Only the delta is usually better with WC compared to air cooling

There is tonnes of info on other enthusiast sites, a video site is not the proper place to look for this

[mazinz]

Thank you for the info. I really do not belong to any true PC tech sites. I did a few searches for some info on google but was mainly getting info from 2003 and 2004. I knew i could get a decent response on this board which is why I posted this here.

Can you recommend any sites that I should check out

PS: it sounds then like I will stick with my current fanning system and skip the water cooling, thogh I would still like ot read more about it

I was reading (somewhere online) that if the pc gets to the 58-60c range that it might be a problem. Then again it was info from a few years back. Good to see that the intel can handle ~100-105

[poisondeathray]

Yes, but I wouldnt' recommend running anything near that for extended periods

You can check your bios settings, but it maybe even set to throttle way earlier which kills performance. You can adjust the settings and thermal management on most enthusiast motherboards

Check out the forums of xtremesystems, anandtech, overclockers.com, hardforum, there are dozens more

[mazinz]

Thanks. I don't overclock and nothing was changed at all with the bios but I wll take a look at it. The pc currnetly now has stayed at 52c for the past half hour or so and has not gone up since

When it hits the 55-58c range I shut the pc down (and that has only ever happened once, that being yesturday night)

I usually run the pc for 5-6 hours a night or less (depending)

this board did come with a full software setup to control the fan and a few other settings. Will see what that has to offer as well

Supposedly we are going to drop back down into the 40s or so tomorrow. See what happens then

[mgh]

though high humidity makes you feel as if it is hotter because sweat evaporates less when humidity is higher. but cooling ability of humid air is higher than dry air when the cooling is not evaporative, your cpu cooling will not be poorer because of high humidity, it will be affected only by ambient temperature.

[rallynavvie]

Yes, but I wouldnt' recommend running anything near that for extended periods

It is true that heat is the one of the top killers of PC components, however CPUs are pretty robust. I mean take for instance the Dell servers I run in my test system at work; they have been running hard at over 60° for nearly two years, and that was on top of whatever use they had been put to prior to me re-purposing them for my project. They've never had an issue other than one HDD slowly started going bad, but the CPUs are fine.

I wouldn't be concerned with those temps. Cooler is better, yes, but IMO the only reason to run cooler at home is hopefully to prevent too much fan noise on my system.

[mazinz]

thank you all for the info but I want to be sure we are all on the same page. I am using Celsius on speed fan not Fahrenheit. Right now it is 120 Farenheight or 49 celsius

poisondeathray
when you mentioned 100-105 I assume you were refering to celsius??


I did notice that when the room temp dropped the pc went back to it's normal temp range. Likewise still in the ball park as well today