How do you keep your computer cool in the hot months?

[yoda313]

So how do you cool your computer? I think may have had a poll on this awhile ago but I thought a revist to this topic may be interesting. Do you outrig it with some outlandish cooling fans? What about water cooling? Or do you simply have the factory installed fan and leave it at that?

I just have the basic fan in both my XP machine and my Vista machine. I even left my cpu cooler the same when I upgraded to a dual core from a single core. I haven't noticed any problems with it.

So what do you?

[disturbed1]

Back in the day I used to pop open the side and place a 20" house fan there just to keep the sucker cool. This was with the older style AMD Athlons, they would idle at 56F with the 20" fan, and 62F without the fan With these newer CPUs and stock coolers, they all idle somewhere around 30-35F, so I don't have the need to do anything different.

[AlanHK]

they all idle somewhere around 30-35F

So, your penguin avatar isn't Linux, but an indication that you actually live in Antarctica?

[RickA]

Done the open case side with household fan back in the day. Back then also tried the dryer vent tubing routing cool air from the A/C vent and piping it close to the intake fans for that little extra.

Currently a combo of water cooling along with upgraded case fans to keep the vid cards, hard drives, memory and everything else in there cool. Thankfully, even with all four cores max'ed running x264 I run cool enough to no longer resort to other measures.

Cheers,
R

Addendum - I chose Water Cooling on the survey.

[Xylob the Destroyer]

I chose #2, but none of the fans I have are special or heavy-duty.
I just added several. 3 tiny fans mounted across the front of one of the drive bays set up as intake fans.
OEM AMD processor fan & heat sink.
another 80mm fan at the bottom of the front, intake again,
80mm on the side, exhaust
two 80mm fans on the back as exhaust.
this is the my desk PC though, not the HTPC.

HTPC is in a very cool room anyway and doesn't run constantly. in fact it rarely runs
but it has basically the same set up minus the side (in this case top) exhaust

[videobread]

I vacuum out the dust and blow out the processor heat sink fins with compressed air every couple of years. I have a vacuum like they use on xerox machines for rebuilding printer toner carts. I have even put new heat transfer goop on one of my systems that was heating. That did the trick. It was my own fault. I removed the processor a year prior just to look at it and did not re-goop.

I have a dust problem. They say it is coming from China! I don't know.

[yoda313]

They say it is coming from China! I don't know.

Which - the dust or the computer hardware? Sorry couldn't resist

[Noahtuck]

Mine are always upgraded with high performance aftermarket fans... no stock fans here...

Plus, since i moved all my PC's to the basement a few years ago, it's like built in free airconditioning 8)

[budz]

I don't use any stock heatsink fans or case fans with the computers that I have. I just bought & installed a Enzotech Extreme X Heatsink fan for my E6400 cpu which is overclocked to 2.66ghz. It did the trick in bringing down the cpu temp by 5c. Although I removed the stock 120mm Delta fan from it because it sounds like a blow dryer & installed a 120mm Scythe S-Flex F fan.

I have mostly 120mm YATE LOON DS12M for intake fans from Petra's Tech Shop & ANTEC 120mm Tricool fans that I use for exhaust.

[Dv8ted2]

I vacuum out the dust and blow out the processor heat sink fins with compressed air every couple of years.

You should really do it once a month to keep it trouble free.

[Midzuki]

I use a hentai picture of Kula Diamond for desktop wallpaper.
It always works.

[fritzi93]

Three fans in, three fans out (including PSU).

[gadgetguy]

I add additional fans as part of the initial build, but don't do anything special when the weather gets warm.

[Nelson37]

New PC's I always keep the stock fans for Warranty.

Older PC's which are OC'd pretty heavily, enlarge all the air vent holes and add low-restriction filters, CPU external air intake horn made from an old plastic pringles can, additional intake fan mounted in duct to outside the case, using the rest of the pringles can.

Used to have something resembling a Jarvik pump ducting air to both the Video card and chipset, new soundcard forced removal.

Have had good success with filters made from register covers covered with sheer panty hose, washable and remove an impressive amount of dirt.

Two old slot-style P1 heatsinks fit quite nicely on top of the Raptor drives.

Intakes low, outflows high, ductwork to take the cool air where needed. Just can't bring myself to try water.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Hey! Stop being climatist. Not everyone gets hot months, you know.

That's why I emigrated

[DereX888]

It doesn't matter with my own computers, theyre all in a/c environment, I always keep 68 (20C), so usually stock fans only. But I always add extra case fan too, with auto speed control (so they're on only when neccessary, I hate fan noise). I also use only good power supplies with fans that can be controlled by motherboard, I hate cheap power supplies where fan is constantly buzzing at its max speed.
SpeedFan is one of my "a must" progs All my comps are basically noiseless or with fan noise kept to minimum.
(Water cooling is too much hassle - and I've seen before damage done by leaking connector)

[lordsmurf]

Nothing special. The room gets a tad hotter, and I may sweat some, but I'm used to the heat. Rooms set to about 76, and it stays about 79-80. Fine for me. Have a ceiling fan above desk, and there is plenty of room behind systems and beside it (desk in center of room). It gets plenty of air in and out. System has several fans inside. Not silent, but not overly noisy either.

[SingSing]

If it is too hot for the PC at home, then it is most likely too hot and humid to sit infront of the PC too. Turn on the house's air conditioner is the way to go.

[TBoneit]

Extra case fans? Nah, Modern processors run cool to start with. Why add the noise?

My Home Computer has two fans in it. Power supply fan and CPU fan.

My Desktop here at work has the same more or less. Only difference is if I turn on the Removable drive bay it has a small fan in the back of it. I also hot swap a SATA drive now and then and it needs a cooling fan on it or it gets to hot to touch, Samsung and the S.M.A.R.T. shows a overtemp for it. Which is why it is relegated to temp storage as needed.

The Pentium D's and Prescotts and early Dual Cores needed more cooling. They Also cost more to run.

Cheers

[Shocker Milwaukee]

outrig it with some outlandish cooling fans?

yeah, these:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185054&Tpk=scythe%2b120
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185060

one intake, one exhaust

i just dial up some airflow when needed with this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811998011&Tpk=scythe%2bkama%2bmeter

[John]

Only stock fans, one on cpu, one on psu. im pretty lucky in the summer here in Scotland it doesnt get very hot. Hot enough to have the windows open. But im going to look into alternative cooling, as the fan is getting annoying. even idle it seems to be spinning pretty fast.

[edDV]

Since converting to Core2 Duo (three machines), heat seems to be less of an issue. Except for the Compaq AthlonX2 laptop which runs hot and the power supply runs even hotter when encoding. I've mounted the power supply brick vertical to the wall for maximum convective heat flow.

[lordsmurf]

The best thing I ever did was remove the CPU fan, and get one of those really large fans that moves more air, but at less RPMs. Did a lot for reducing wind tunnel noise in the room. Same for the power supply. The case fans are custom added, low-rpm fans that move good air.

I hate the little buzzing noisemaker fans.

[DereX888]

The best thing I ever did was remove the CPU fan, and get one of those really large fans that moves more air, but at less RPMs. Did a lot for reducing wind tunnel noise in the room. Same for the power supply. The case fans are custom added, low-rpm fans that move good air.

I hate the little buzzing noisemaker fans.

Doesn't we all

With help from "SpeedFan" (I recommend this little freeware gem to everyone) all fans stay off when not needed, and even CPU's fan - if its not off - usually runs at 1/3-1/2 of its speed, which makes it basically silent. Just the PS' fan kicks-in from 0 to 600-800rpm and sometimes even above 1000rpm once a while, but for as long as it doesn't hit max speed it is pretty quiet.
My extra case fans never kick-in under "regular" use, the only times theyre in use and basically all of my fans start 'buzzing' on the main PC is when i.e. I (rarely) play COD with friends, or when some heavy computing is going on (encoding or such).

SpeedFan is available HERE

[raffie]

Well, on my old comp - wich i still use as my main rigg - the only case fan died out bout a year ago and I havent bothered to replace it since i was planning to build a new comp anyway. But there you go, it doesnt seem to have missed it. On my new comp I built then, I got myeself a nice big Zalman CPU fan (this one), quite silent, but when the room gets hot, it starts turning up the RPM and also the noise obviously.

[solarfox]

My "general purpose" PC, I don't worry about so much, since it's rarely called upon to do heavy lifting for days at a time. The only special thing I did there is to replace the dinky 80mm case fans and 60mm CPU fans with 120mm and 80mm fans, respectively; the larger fans can move more air at lower RPMs. I also put a piece of furnace filter over the air intakes to help keep the dust out of the case. It really seems to help; I don't have to vacuum dust out of the heat sink fins nearly as often.

The dedicated video editor, on the other hand -- multiple 120mm fans for intake and exhaust, including one blowing directly across the stack of five(!) hard drives, and a bigass copper-finned heat sink (that's a technical term ) on the CPU. It may be overkill, but it gives me peace of mind when I leave it chewing on a batch of video projects 24/7 for a couple of weeks at a stretch.

[redwudz]

I use air conditioning. Outside it's about 105F.

[ntscuser]

My Foxconn case came with a 80mm exhaust fan connected to a 120mm vent. I've since bought a 120mm to fill the gap but have yet to get around to fitting it. Also have a portable A/C unit for emergencies because as mentioned above if it's too hot for the PC to work it's probably too hot for me as well.

[Conquest10]

AC. Fan does nothing when its HUMID.

[TBoneit]

I'm not sure humidity causes problems for computers in terms of overheating. Or no more problems for cooling than a computer running in Denver, Colorado where the air is thinner and thus to me that thinner air could reduce the cooling effect of the air being blown over the HSF assembly. It is I suppose possible that 100% humidity could aid cooling by increasing the density of the air.

Having said that, if I'm not comfortable I'm not going to be using the computer anyway.