Odd question about case cooling fans.

[Schmidlapper]

I have both sides off of my case currently while getting a replacement CD-RW. Any how my CPU temp is 5 degrees C lower like this. Me thinks I may just leave off the sides to remain this cool. My question is if I leave off the sides should I disconnect my two Sunon case fans to lessen power supply load and hopefully operate a little quieter? With the sides off are these fans doing anything? Input fan front low and output fan rear below power supply. Power supply has fan to keep it cool. Anyone hazard an opionion?

[Acko]

Hi Schmidlapper

Welcome to the forums

As it is possible you are monitoring your temps. Just try experimenting with your fans by dissconecting say the front fan & leaving the rear then reverse the procedure & try all permations untill you have the best performance?

I have proved in the past that with the sides on the case & a 80mm fan mounted directly in line with the cpu/heatsink (case side blowing air in to cpu/heatsink) area that the system will actually run slightly cooler than with out the side panel on!

Even with the extra fan the system seems quieter.

However you do not state your spec of pc but if you are running below say 50C you have no worries.

Acko

[Acko]

Sorry about the last line, you do state your pc specs.

Acko

[lennytiger]

below 50C is fine i run 45C full load at night and 50C day time (ambient air temp in south africa in summer is 30C) my delta on my cak38 is at 7V!!

[Tbird man]

i have my case side off and my comair rotron 120mm 120VAC fan blowing on my hsf and my temps went down 9°C when i put th fan on and no more noise than the hsf. i was running 44°C idle with the case side off now i am running 35°C with the fan thats a 9C° difference.

[lennytiger]

good them fans but they get noisy, just a desk fan works well

I prefer to have my case sides closed cause small animals and children sometimes get interested!!

[Schmidlapper]

The PC is in a computer stand that surrounds it in a wooden case that is maybe 1 inch wider on each of the sides and 10 inches higher than the PC. The front is open exposing the PC faceplate. The worst thing is there is a board across the back that is about 1 inch from the rear exhausting Sunon. It is not a full back but has an opening at the top and bottom for the cables and heat escape. With the PC case open and all the case fans on I can feel cool air blowing out from the front from between the pc and the wooden side. I think if I unplug any of the case fans I will just be creating dead air that will heat up. The fans seem to be creating out flow even with the sides off. The best thing is the way it is now You cant see that the sides are off but I still get the 5 degree Celsius drop in temps by having the sides off. When or if I have to move the PC and put the sides back on the temps only go up to 45.9C which is ok too. Thanks for your views. This is not my first Overclock but is my best so far. I owe much to this board for what I know. Previous Overclocks are Pentium Pro 180@233, Pentium MMX 233@266, Celeron 366@550 and CeleronII 566@850. Oh and my first overclock back in 1988 was a Commodore Colt XT 4.77@9.54 just by hitting an undocumented key combo Ctrl-X for Extra turbo.

[Tbird man]

if you mean that the 120mm 120vac fans are noisy you havent heard this one it is quieter than my glaciator 2 and dosen't whine.

[Schmidlapper]

Follow up to my original post, is that I have put the sides back onto the computer and I will tell you why. I was at first enjoying the low temps by having my sides off of the PC. But I started noticing my temps going up by 10 degrees over a relatively short time (maybe seven days) and I couldn't understand why. Well after some close inspection I discovered that just under my Heat sink fan was all kinds of dirt blocking the heat sink fins. It had only been 10 days since I had cleaned it out, before reinstalling it. My Vantec has a shroud around the heat sink top just under the fan and it is hard to see the top under it. Any how I have put the case sides back on and taped up all extra inlets other than the front intake fan. In front of that I have put filter material similar to what is in an external fish aquarium filter. Sort of reminds one of stiff loose black scotchbrite only with more air flow. My temps in this configuration have been about 4 degrees Celsius higher than my original sides off temp of 40.9C now idle it is 44.9C. This was the second time that I found this large accumulation of dust just under the fan in my heat sink but it had taken months to build up there before. So that is the biggest down side to having an open case at least in a dust prone area outher than noise. So if your temps have crept up and you are not sure why look under your fan and you just may find your heat sink is clogged on top.