Cover on/off

Hello all.
While messing around with my system on my first atempts at Overclocking, I suddenly found myself asking some very weird questions, heh.
Anyway one of these major league important questions [heh] was, should a Tower cover be on or off, and which would be best for air flow and cooling.
My theory is that with it off, the air flow is more free and less heat will get trapped inside the case/tower.
But I also found myself asking myself, if by taking the case lid off the Tower, it would cause the system-motherboard-cpu to be more suseptable to the rooms temp. If the room has heating in it and it is cold outside, you have your heating turned up, so wouldnt that also effect the systems overall temp?
If anyone thinks that is worth replying to, then I am interested to here your thoughts.
Regards
Nemes

you shouldn't worry about room temperature because the heat of the processor and inside the case is generally warmer than room temperature...

some people have lower temps by removing the side panel. IMO this is only because they have poor air flow through their case in the first place.

if you have a case setup with good air flow, you will get better temps with the side panel on.

room temp is very important to cpu temp.
if the room temp is cool, the case temp won't be much hotter (with good air flow). the lower the case temp, the better the hsf can cool the cpu.

I would like to add that it is impossible for the cpu to be cooler than your room temperature. Good airflow + a good HSF = temps that are close to your room temp. The formula for your cpu temperature I believe is C/W rating of your HSF * # of watts your cpu uses + your room temp.

TheNamelessOne said:

I would like to add that it is impossible for the cpu to be cooler than your room temperature.

Click to expand...

unless you're using some type of extreme cooling.

unless you're using some type of extreme cooling.

Click to expand...

I was assuming he was going with air.

Nemes said:

My theory is that with it off, the air flow is more free and less heat will get trapped inside the case/tower.

Click to expand...

You may not want the air to flow freely, because then it may not flow over all the hot parts. By constricting (and sometimes guiding) airflow, we try to ensure everything inside the case gets the heat blown off of it. If only a few parts needed fanning, then of course you're right that a case would hamper that, and we'd be better mounting all components in a cage, with a few fans where needed.

Hello to all again
My cpu is situated smack bang under my power supply within the tower case, and as such I am worries about it getting some blead off heat from the power supply also.
I am going to do some trials with the cover on and off over a 5 hr periods and see if the temp changes either way.
I suspect, for me, that it will be better with the cover off, anyway I will see.
Thanks to all who replied.
Rehards
Nemes

Actually the reverse is true, the air blowing from inside the case and out of the power supply is often the very air that comes off the CPU (hot). Half the heat of the PSU is from the dang CPU!

If you can't get enough air out of your comp then it will probably be better to leave the case off. It should be apparent within 1 hour if it matters. I would also agree that with good airflow, you should get better temps with the side on... If you get water cooling you don't have to worry about evacuating hot air from the CPU HSF, and then all you're moving is the air from the components. I get case temps in the low 40's with the side on and mid 30's with it off... my CPU temp drops 5C with the side off... so I leave my side off until I can afford water and my 1700 T-Bred.

Hi again.
Well this all came about after something we all dread, happened, lol ROLFLMAO I GOT BLUE SCREENED.
HEH
Now I thought crist what caused that is it my increases to the host+dram clock. So I went into my tower to investigate, and though my cpu seemed normal heat wise, temp marks were the same, my graphics card was roasting.
So I started to investigate further, and figured after watching the fan on the graphics card, that it was a duff fan, it would spin a little stop, speed up again and slow down to a crawl, not working right obviously.
But I also started to wonder if maybe it was my cpu getting to hot also, so I started to look for a few other cooling ideas.
And I came up with the genuis idea of using an 486 cpu fan for an extra air flow source.
When I joined it to a regular power supply socket, the kind that joins to any hardware inside the case, ie-back of hard-drive, the amount of air it pumped out was impressive, way more than the one on the graphics cpu could even hope to dream off.
So after thinking it over, and placing the fan inside the tower case in a random spot just to beef up air flow, I decided that my best bet would be to take off the one on the graphics card, as it was obviously faulty, and replace it with the old 486 cpu fan.
It took allot of work to find the right screw combo to fit the fan onto the graphics cards heatsink, but I finally did it, and my graphics card has never been cooler.
I realy did want to use it just for another fan placed somewere at random inside the case to beef up the air flow, but with the graphics card fan on the blink and on it's last legs, I thought the best plac for the 486 fan was on the g-card.
Anyway I have had no more blue screens after this.
I still do not know what the cause of the blue screen was, couldn't fathom the logs out that xp wanted to send off to MS.
Anyway to get back to some of your other points people, I think I will take the advice of leaving the tower case cover on as it does make sense to believe that the airflow from the fans kneads to get directed at parts and not flow out of the tower case.
Regards to all and thanks.
Nemes

Hi all
Found out what gave the blue screen, twas me clocking up to 115mhz on my Dram Host clcok.
I have a theory as to why it does this, which is that it has to be the pc100 ram.
I was told that I would struggle with that type of ram and trying to up my clock...guess they were right.
How do I know this? well I tried it again at 115mhz and it just shut the system down completely.
It cant be the cpu, as I have read people overclocking my cpu to way more than what I got it to.. so the only thing I can think off, is its the ram writing duff data or just nor writing at all at 115mhz clock speed.
So it looks like I am gona have to invest in some ddr.
Regards for now
Nemes

if you dont have the case on your comp, would it be a good idea to clean the dust out every once and awhile?

I was watching my temps and when I removed the side panel on my case, the temps went up by 1 degree C, so...

Depends on your case in general and if it already has good air flow or not.