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How much Ambient Temperature Plays A Role in Cooling

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BigTerminator

Member
Joined
Jul 27, 2010
Location
Maryland
Hey, I have a Noctua NH-D14 which is an amazing cooler that performs extremely well while being quiet at the same time. I'm posting about how the ambient temperature really affects my cooling. During the summer with A/C, my room temps are about 19-21c or around 67-70f which at 4ghz gave me around 70-72c while priming. Now it's getting to winter season and the temperature is around 40f or 3c without any heating and my temps are 55-60c while priming and 20c idle which is amazing. Now I noticed it isn't a 1 to 1 ratio of cooling with ambient temperature but it really helps or destroys my cooling ability. Who knows what my temps could be if I had a 360mm radiator. My question to you guys is how do the ambient temps affect your temps in the summer and winter time?
Also, would you go without heating your house just to cool your PC? I know I would :)
 
Cavemaaan :)
that is why i want way low temps at load, so when the california temps go up, when the dust builds, the thing still works good.

then the other thing, having worked all NIGHT long at 55F* getting everything perfect, and waking up at 3PM after that all night session, to see that it worked great in 55F* now all i have to do is get it to work in 80F* too.

nope i am tired of freezing my butt off for the computer and to cool the house at night, if i wanted to be shivering and wearing a parka and forking over hundreds of dollers a month for AC power costs, i would move back to whyoming , instead of california :)
 
it should scale linearly with your ambient temperature...it's a function of newtonian cooling. What's probably happening is that you're getting higher temps in your case in the summer due to direct sunlight and what not. If you were using a 120.3 you'd get much closer to perfectly linear scaling methinks...depends how you place it.
 
Cooler chip temps slightly reduce the silicon chip workload, ie it runs better in cooler temps, somewhat. The ratio is close to 1-1. Not exact as you see.

Not sure what fans your using, but you could ge better fans for the CPU and case for the summer and turn them down in the winter.

It's all part of overclocking, the summer vs winter temps. You could go watercooling, but it's still the same ratio. Watercooling done right will get your summer temps down and stay good in the winter of course and you don't have to freeze yourself for better temps.

Umm, getting the cat off the top of the case would be a good start, LOL!
 
HAHA, well the cat usually isn't there but I think is wrong is that outside it was about 40f and inside it was probably 50-55f so I think it actually was scaling almost 1 to 1. Either way having a 4ghz chip running 60c at load on air cooling is really impressive. I just replaced the 120mm Noctua fan with 2 70cfm fans for a total of 3 fan on the NH-D14 so my temps can go even lower than what I was getting. My 5770 never goes above 55c at 45% fan speed. When it starts getting even colder, say around 10f, do you think it will still scale 1 to 1 and my CPU temps will go even lower near 50c while priming?
 
i can't imagine why you would want to be in a room that was 10f for a daily use computer. Admittedly, cold air benching is a tactic, but that's for BENCHING, not 24/7 stuff...I think this is a bad plan.
 
I won't go under 55f for room temp let alone 10f but I would do it for benching and just to see how low it can go. I can't afford phase change or liquid cooling. I'm perfectly fine with my temps when the ambient temp was 70f, but it's cool to see how low you can go. I'm getting similar temperature results as a 360mm radiator, granted the Ambient temp is a lot lower. How low do you guys think a common 360mm radiator with 38mm fans for a Core i7 at 4ghz would be at 50f ambient temps?
 
Run a duct from the window to the intake fans of the case.
By the time the air leaves the case it'll be at a reasonable temp for human habitation, but the computer gets the cold stuff.
 
My room is small but my Window is on the opposite part of the room to my case so I wonder how good it would be right next to it. I guess the best place to do extreme benching would be in Alaska :)
 
HAHA, well the cat usually isn't there but I think is wrong is that outside it was about 40f and inside it was probably 50-55f so I think it actually was scaling almost 1 to 1. Either way having a 4ghz chip running 60c at load on air cooling is really impressive. I just replaced the 120mm Noctua fan with 2 70cfm fans for a total of 3 fan on the NH-D14 so my temps can go even lower than what I was getting. My 5770 never goes above 55c at 45% fan speed. When it starts getting even colder, say around 10f, do you think it will still scale 1 to 1 and my CPU temps will go even lower near 50c while priming?

Play with it. You are dealing with air temps, so you can duct, blow, dance whatever. I'm not sure of your goal except your having fun.

Keep having fun, it's kinda an individual thing.:shrug:
 
I'm not going to duct! Thats way overboard, plus my case is 10ft. away with a huge desk in the way. When it starts to snow then I'm going to build a cave in the snow and put my computer right under there :) Hopefully the snow around won't start melting. The only thing I'm trying to get out of this is just wowing myself with how low the temps are. AND since my temps are so low, how high do you guys think I could overclock? 4.5ghz?

P.S.- I really want to overclock near 4.4ghz but my computer keeps crashing even when I have almost 1.5v on the core. Remember my CPU is unlocked so increasing the VTT voltage which is already high won't be necessary right at 193 base clock? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
amds have lower temps but they also have a lower ceiling...it's more to do with the placement of the sensor than anything I think (because of bobnova). What temp does it hit instability at? I think once you get into the 50's or so at load you can't go any further successfully.
 
Temperature isn't the problem. My CPU at 85c will crash. At 4ghz I get around 60c which is way cold. I can't get past 4.2ghz for my life. VTT is high and again since my multiplier is unlocked, all you have to do is increase voltage for the CPU higher, correct? I have also had a i7 860 in the same board that wouldn't go above 4.2 ghz so it might be my board but it's extremely high end. I think I'm doing something wrong, anyone have help?
 
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