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khenry
Over this Bank Holiday weekend I decided on one last attempt to cool this Socket A machine. All the non-essential peripherals or wiring that might have messed up the intake airflow from the Scythe front fan, were removed from the Jeantech Phong chassis. The cables were also re-arranged.
I wanted to keep the case below 40 degrees, lowering my expectations as far as they could go compared to this modern build where they rarely rise above 30 for 2D usage. On the first attempt it mostly managed it, taking 45 minutes and an hour before passing the 35 degrees C/95F and 39 Degrees C/102F marks respectively, on a day where it was 15-17 degrees outside.
First, I wanted to sort out the general system temps. I reinstalled my 6800GT which needed testing anyway to see if it had been killed by the dead Giga-byte mobo. Thankfully, it worked. Its Zalman GPU cooler, installed by the previous owner, subtracted three degrees from the system temperature. It’s ironic that heat was a bigger reason than speed for finally retiring my ATi Radeon 9800 Pro card, even in a backup PC.
For the hardcore, The MSI KT880 Delta motherboard would be seen as pants, requiring a CMOS reflash to clear unsuccessful underclocking as well as the usual overclocking. At least the RAM can clock independently to its full DDR speed rather than remaining at 333Mhz - at the cost of two more degrees. Outside of LAN gaming days, I can decide when to run the RAM at full speed and send the case temp above 35 degrees/95F.
Sadly, the Athlon XP 2800+ CPU, even with the new HSF and TIM application, topped out at 51 degrees. That was still too hot. Underclocking the CPU to 1.7GHz gave a stable 47 degree/116F temp reading from the BIOS and Hardware Monitor in Windows. I’m sticking with that reading at least until I install a PSU with its own cooler. This would supply triple 120mm fan-assisted case cooling to match the new build. With the Antec Earthwatts installed, and after much trial and error, I’ve found the best trade-off between performance and stability without heat-induced errors from Windows. Any remaining hot air not removed by the side or rear fans will rise through the Earthwatts’ front vents. Its silent 80mm rear fan should provide the final exhaust.
Between my “jackpot winning” clockspeed and the default CMOS setting of 1.25GHz, DDR 266 and a 100MHz FSB, the temperature spread is the same three degrees which the Zalman GPU cooler removed. So whilst I wanted to cool the PC down, there was no point making the machine a complete snail to achieve this. Even so, I’ve picked up a £7 Duron from Ebay should the Athlon ever give up and melt down.
Despite having a couple of “Why not just buy a Mac” moments, along with language as blue as the LEDs in my new fans, I wouldn’t change a thing about the last month- it was like reading every issue of Custom PC to date through direct experience. I’ve been reminded that if you get 3-4 years’ daily use from PC gear that was secondhand and practically free (as opposed to paying full price and seeing it depreciate), you should be grateful. If you wish to retain old machines, you do need spares, something I hadn’t practically bothered to do since the days of AT power supplies.
With all the money spent on cooling I could have bought a second brand new case - but that wouldn’t have brought me my crash course in proper cooling including cable management and issue 46’s TIM application article (cheers Combatus). Besides, courtesy of Akasa and Maplins (order code A10BJ, £2.50) I now have enough fan screws to attach a wind turbine to my roof if I wanted…
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