Cool running PSU?

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Larc

I'm having some slight cooling problems in a mid tower case that's in an area
with less than ideal air circulation. The hottest thing in the case is the PSU
(Antec Truepower 430W) that stays at about 47C. Anybody know of a reliable PSU
that is cooler than that?

Power eaters other than the mobo are a Pentium D 945 CPU (rated 95W), DVD-RW and
DVD-ROM (never operating at the same time), Matrox G450 video card, three 80mm
case fans, and a Thermaltake MiniTyphoon CPU hs/f.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Larc



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Larc said:
I'm having some slight cooling problems in a mid tower case that's in an area
with less than ideal air circulation. The hottest thing in the case is the PSU
(Antec Truepower 430W) that stays at about 47C. Anybody know of a reliable PSU
that is cooler than that?

Power eaters other than the mobo are a Pentium D 945 CPU (rated 95W), DVD-RW and
DVD-ROM (never operating at the same time), Matrox G450 video card, three 80mm
case fans, and a Thermaltake MiniTyphoon CPU hs/f.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Larc
Click to expand...

All power supplies generate heat. That's why almost all power supplies have
cooling fans. The cooling fan is to cool the power supply. A side-effect
is that this cooling fan also give some very limited cooling to the rest of
the case. The airflow through a power supply should be from the INSIDE of
the case, through the power supply and exhaust hot air out the back of the
power supply.

If you've got cooling problems in a case, changing the power supply isn't
going to help, UNLESS the current power supply is malfunctional. For
example, if a cooling fan died on the power supply, then heat might creep
from the power supply into the case.

So I doubt if changing the power supply will help you at all. But if you
are determined to do it anyway . . .

Good luck finding one that will be cooler than 47C under load. But what you
are looking for is how efficient is the power supply? A 60% efficient power
supply will generate more waste heat than a 70% efficient power supply will.

But again, even if you find a more efficient power supply, it probably won't
help. You should probably look at a better case, or add some more active
cooling to the current case. -Dave
 
Antec's are one of the most efficent designs of PSU's and therefore run
cooler than almost all others for a given wattage output.
 
Larc said:
I'm having some slight cooling problems in a mid tower case that's in an area
with less than ideal air circulation. The hottest thing in the case is the PSU
(Antec Truepower 430W) that stays at about 47C. Anybody know of a reliable PSU
that is cooler than that?

Power eaters other than the mobo are a Pentium D 945 CPU (rated 95W), DVD-RW and
DVD-ROM (never operating at the same time), Matrox G450 video card, three 80mm
case fans, and a Thermaltake MiniTyphoon CPU hs/f.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Larc
Click to expand...

Consider this: Your power supply cooled by outside air completely
independent of other components.
This is called a PSU channel. More info here:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=8450&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
 
| Antec's are one of the most efficent designs of PSU's and therefore run
| cooler than almost all others for a given wattage output.

Thanks Dave C and DaveW. I think things are a little better now. The front and
rear case fans had been powered via "fans only" outlets from the PSU. But rpm
of the fans seemed much too slow. Connecting the rear case fan to the mobo
"case fan" power source and the front fan to a regular PSU outlet resulted in
much higher rpms for both fans.

Also, I did some rearranging of cables and wires inside the case to open the
area up a little more.

A next possible step will be installing a larger northbridge heatsink since the
northbridge chip seems to be the source of much of the mobo heat.

Larc



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| Consider this: Your power supply cooled by outside air completely
| independent of other components.
| This is called a PSU channel. More info here:
| http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=8450&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Terry, thanks very much for that link. It looks like an interesting idea. With
only three large drive bays and two DVD drives in the case, one of the drives
would have to be inside the channel. But with a drive in the top bay and a bay
fan in the second, it looks very promising.

I'll give that serious consideration if improvements already made don't solve
the problem.

Thanks again!

Larc



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