Coolers/fans

[bytewiz]

I read up on a overclocking board about using heat sinks, water pipes and extreme cooling devices to keep overclocked pc's on the freeze.

Anybody out there experiemented with these?

[Lyte]

Check out our overclocking/modding section.

Lyte

[McDaddy]

heat sinks, heat pipes, liquid cooling, and phase change cooling, what would you like to know.

first thing to konw is that pure copper is the best metal to use for heat transfer.

Basic heat sink. temp range 110 degree faranheit and up
take a copper block machine in some fins. stick on a fan and there you go. heat travels from the coppr block in to the copper fins. the fins get warm and then the can blows cool air across the fins in order to cool them down. advantages. they are fairly cheap. disadvantages. with new processors, the heat sinks need to be quite large, and they are only so effective.

heat pipes temp range 90 degree faranheit and up
uses the same cooliing principal as the heat sink. except some type of liquid is used in side of some sealed pipes to transfer the heat from the processor to the fins, then the fan blows across the fins attaqched to the heat pipes. what makes these betters is all of the fins receave the the heat equally. advantages: fairly cheat, better than regular heat sink.
disadvantages:still all the heat produced is left in the case, and it is not as effective as more advanced cooling.

liquid cooling(this is what i have as of now) temp range. 40-60 dergee faranheit
stick a special heas sink on top of the processor, called a water block. then you have a radiator, resovior, and a pump. water flows from the pump in to the radiator where a fan blows air across it and cools the water inside. ( blow the air to the outside of your case) then the cool water flows through your water block, then to the resovior, and finally back to the pump. advantages:very effective. can eliminat most every heat issue. disadvantages : price, has to be cleaned, and leaks. (if you have a leak you are kind of sol. but i have never had one)

phase change cooling. (starts at $800us) temp range neg. 50 degree faranheit and below
works like the air conditinoing in your car. a compressor compresses a gas(typically R134A or somthing like it)the gas is compressed in to a liquid, which creates heat, and that heat is radiated off out side of the computer. then that liquid travels down a pipe twards your processor. as it gets to the processor, it changes phases,:rolleyes: back to a gas. it does so right on top of the processor. as it changes from a liquid to a gas, it becomes super, extreemly, uber cold.(there is no such thing as cold, cold is nothing more than the lack of heat) the cold gas absorbs the heat and becomes warm. the cycles back to the compressor where the process start all over again. advantages:super duper uber cooling. Disadvantages: price

the temp ranges are aproxamate i know that the temps can be differant. but this is probely an average by my best guess.

[dr911]

Great info, McDaddy !!! Thanks for all the details. I just learn some things. I was wondering if there is a "set" or "standard" temp for PC's ??

[McDaddy]

there are realy no set temps on how cold you can make things. but there are temos on how hot you can make them. for your processor, above 150-120 degree faranheit is bad bad bad.

you also have to monitor temps on your videocards, mother board chipset, and ram if you are going to overclock.

one thing else to think about that is off topic. heat needs to be removed from the computer case. with fans, etc. thats y liquid cooling and phase change cooling are so nice. with heat pipes and regulare heat sinks, the heat remains in side of the case. where as with liquid cooling and phase change, the heat is removed from the case imediatly and there for lower over all case temps as well.

if you are planning on doing extreem cooling do you research first, know what you are getting, ask questions, make sure you have the power to do it. in my computer ii have 2 power supplies and put out a total of a 1000W of power. 1 psu runs my motherboard, hdd's and optical drives, the other runs my liquid cooling, hdd coolers, and all case fans.

[dr911]

McDaddy,

Would it help (to cool your PC) if you took off a side of your case ? Right now(using Speedfan 4.27) I have a temp of 130 F running at 4116RPMs. Is this nomal ?

Speedfan web site:http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php

[McDaddy]

the temps i gave a guestemates. 130 is running hotter than any thing i like, by far. it wont nessearly hurt any thing, but heat is your enemy. one reason that your temps may be so high is that your over all case temps may be high, if that is the case, the you are cooling your processors already hot heat sink, with warm or hot air from your case. if you blow warm air across a heat sink, it will not cool as well as if you blow cool air across it. if this is the case, you may would like to add a fan or two to your case, or even a simpler solution is, if you have your case in a tight area, move it to where cooler air can circulate around it, or even change the direction that some of the fans blow can increase you cooling.

if i have 5 fans on my case and all 5 of them are blowing the out side air in, then where does the hot air go.... the answer is that it dosent. it just sits in side of the case and defeats the purpose of the fans. same if they are all blowing out. if you have 2 fans right next to each other, and one is blowing in and the other is blowing out, then they just circulate the same air between each other. but if you have 2 fans in the front of your case blowing cool air in and 2 in the back blowing hot air out, and 1 in the top blowing hot air out(since heat rises) then you can drematically lower your case temps