Wait a second...

[Christoph]

I remember reading that the best way to test the effectiveness of your fan setup was to remove the covers from the case. The idea was that if your cooling was done well, there would be a minimal change when you took off the covers.
This seems kinda strange to me. Why not just run your comp naked (the comp, not you)? Obviously this doesn't apply for case modders etc., but what about the rest of you?

[William]

actually, if you have good cooling, your temps should go up because you would be messing up the airflow in your case.

[flounder43]

When I have all of my fans going...there is only a marginal change in temps...The CPU is constant...

[azhari]

From what I've been reading, taking the cover off is only half the test. You're supposed to aim a house fan at your naked case also. This way you get maximum airflow on your cpu. Then, if your cpu temp doesn't go down much you know that you have good airflow through your case.

[Penance]

So this means that if you're *already* pointing a floor fan at an open case that you're never going to get your temps any lower than they currently are with your current HSF/case?

hehe, doomsday for me in that case: running AIM, winamp and IE6 -- 115F (ouch!)

[azhari]

I didn't mean to take the HSF off also, just the case off with a fan pointed to the inside to get fresh air to the HSF. But if this is what you have already, then I doubt you could improve on it with the case closed. Unless you went to other more aggressive methods of cooling.

But, I haven't really tried all of these combinations myself, just relaying what I've been reading. It seems to make sense to me, so I'm passing it on.

115F (46C) is not bad under load. But I'm sure you could make it lower with a better HSF than the DragonOrb.

BTW, welcome to the forum :)