Questions about cooling my case??

Current setup:
Thermaltake Armor w/ 250mm side fan
evga 680i
e6600 @ 3.5ghz sittin under a 9500 zalman
2x 8800gts's in SLI, no oc, with stock coolers
90mm intake in back (over hard drives)
120mm intake in front (over hard drives)
250mm intake in side
120mm exhaust in back

Currently my processor idles around 50c, video cards idle around 63c with the fans cranked all the way up. My roommate sold his video card and borrowed one of mine for a few days until his new one comes in and in his case, at stock fan speed that card idles at around 54c. At that fan speed, mine idles at 70c.

So..
With this setup, what would be a good recommendation? I thought about cooling the cards with an HR-03 Plus on each, and adding a TR Ultra 120 Extreme (q6600 should be here in a day or so). The only thing im concerned with is, will 2 HR-03's and an Ultra 120 extreme fit in my case with that 250mm fan on the side panel? I know by adding 2 HR-03s I'm probably going to eliminate the other PCI slots, but the only slot being used is for my audigy 2 zs platinum sound card, but I can always use onboard audio. It should be good enough. Any estimates of how much of a difference adding the HR-03s and the Ultra 120 would make over the stock coolers and the 9500?

Any suggestions? Do I need more case fans? Should this provide sufficient air flow? Should i turn a current fan around to get more exhaust? Will all the additions fit with that I have?

Your problem may just be a matter of airflow. You have a lot more cfm going in than going out.

When that happens you end up with hot air in the case as its not getting pulled out fast enough.

Set the 90mm to exhaust and see if that helps any with idle temps.

The HR's should improve the cooling over the stock coolers considerably. The 120 ultra will also do better than the 9500. If space is an issue you could wait till the new ultima 90 is available. Its much smaller than the 120 ultra and is almost the same in cooling.

http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3068

... I told you so, haha. Need more exhaust bro.

dont be mean.. remember, thats MY video card in your case.. i can go steal it back right now and leave you computer-less = No bioshock for you..

jdf_warrior said:

dont be mean.. remember, thats MY video card in your case.. i can go steal it back right now and leave you computer-less = No bioshock for you..

Click to expand...

Whoopishhhh! (whipcrack)

LOL.... Remember thats MY couch you sit on downstairs and My kitchen utensils and grill.... hehe

With those cases with the giant side fans, I would try setting all other case fans to exhaust. Yes, the idea contradicts the common theories of case airflow--but so do giant 10-inch side fans. With all that cool air coming directly into the side of the case, I'd try setting everything else to exhaust just to see what happened. I bet you'd find a nice temp decrease.

I'm going to agree with Wayward_son. Also, I'm guinea pigging the new Zalman VGA cooler for G80 graphics cards, so I'll let you know how it works. It takes up less space than the stock cooler, according to a Zalman rep I spoke to.

Problem with that "giant" fan is that it only moves 105 cfm. All his other fans move more air than that. We have looked for a way to change the direction of the side fan and its not possible. Er, well possible.. not feasible. He has a place for another fan(90 in the top). I was going to see if we could get him one of those. Basically the way I saw it was to have the 250 and the 120 in the front as intakes. Then have both 90s and the other 120 as exhausts. We also talked about him cutting a few holes in the bottom to directly feed the gpus with ambient air. But, he hasn't decided what he wants to do.