Gary said:
Thank you!
You know, it surprised me. I expected th GPU would take a load off of
the microprocessor. I thought the temperature may go a little but not
like it did. As you have stated, the whole insides heat up dramatically.
The graphic card must radiate tremendous heat???
At least by the standards of a system from the olden days. I bet it's
not a whole lot more than 30 watts or so, but the processor doesn't
dissipate any more either. Here even a measly 800EB and a Radeon 9000
were enough to cause a fairly warm PSU. Well, back then (1999/2000)
general knowledge about ventilation basics still was fairly slim, and
systems tended to be far more noisy than required for the kind of heat
they put out. Yup, mine included. Years later I ripped out all of my
then secondary system's noisy harddrives because I could no longer stand
the kind of racket they made and replaced them by one both quieter and
specially mounted drive; the previously inaudible intake fan was to
follow soon, the recent PSU change was the last step.
But don't overdo it, a Delta jet engine is not needed. A model with 2000
rpm or less (for 80 mm) should do. Does the P2B-F already support fan
speed control? (If you don't know, install Speedfan, set it up and find
out. Pretty nifty tool. The boxed fan on my 800EB is set up to hover
between 50% and 70% depending on temperature, giving a noise level
between virtually inaudible and very quiet. It would be quite disturbing
at full speed, which I found out not to be necessary at all.)
Asus P2B-f slot 1(440Bx chipset) 1014 beta2 BIOS
PIII 850 mhz with IWILL II sloket adapter
512mb PC100 ECC memory
30 gb IDE Western Digital 7200 rpm
Probably not all that quiet.
SD-M1202 IDE DVD/CD ROM
Adaptec AHA2940U2W SCSI controller
9.1gb Seagate 7200 rpm SCSI hard disk (LVD Ultra2 wide--80mb sec)
Yay, that beast must be loud. Ah wait, that's only a 'Cuda... still not
exactly quiet either. If you can pick up an 18 gig Cheetah 36ES
(ST318406LW) cheap, do it - you won't be disappointed, particularly when
decoupling it. (It was the quietest 10k rpm drive around for years and
can be considered one of the most desktop friendly SCSI drives. It's
still not bad today, though current IDE drives outclass it in both noise
and performance. Still, if you only need 18 or 36 gigs, want something
SCSI and reasonably speedy without getting 15k level access noise, not a
bad choice.) It's not your average modern IDE drive in terms of heat
though, so make sure there is decent airflow around it. (The intake area
in the bottom front of tower cases lends itself to drive mounting
anyway. I have a 36ES mounted in a spare drive cage resting on foam
pieces from my DVD burner's packaging and blown at by a very quiet temp
controlled (and attached with those rubber thingies) intake fan there -
the foam pieces decouple the drive so well that the access noise -
normally only a bit quieter than on a 1st gen Barracuda ATA with rigid
mounting - is down to 2.5" levels and tends to be hard to make out, and
the drive even stays cool. I did apply some pieces of anti-vibration
bitumen mats to the drive cage for good measure. Yup, all of that -
drive and mounting - was my radical hard drive noise cure.) If you're
interested in noise reduction, check out silentpcreview.com.
Plextor PX-W 124TS SCSI CDRW 12/4/32 (Ultra--20mb sec)
Nvida Riva TNT2 32mb
SoundBlaster Live Value PCI soundcard
OK for gaming, not good if you value sound quality.
Linksys Wireless G PCI adapter
With the SCSI cables, ventilation is part of my suspicion. I've got a
lower intake fan pulling air in through a filter foam. But I don't have
an exit vetilating fan.
Yup, that also was the problem here. Plus I wasn't too eager to dremel a
hole for the back fan myself, as the case provided none. Intake fans
typically aren't of much use for case cooling if the throughput of
outtake fans is lower (which is the case if you have an 80 mm PSU fan
blowing out only).
I think a power supply and exit fan will add
more years of life.
The next item to cause you a headache will probably be the graphics card
fan... Nasty buggers. (Fortunately I've gotten away with my trusty
Radeons with passive cooling so far.)
Stephan
