Underclocking and heat

Hi

We're facing the worst summer ever in this country. The temperature is hovering in the late 40C, in most places it's about 47 and above. The heat has already killed 700 people in the country.

My XP1800+ is probably next. My room temp is rarely dipping below 38C, even at night. My peak CPU temp is about 56C, at which point my system starts beeping to give me the temp warnings.

I've already undervolted the CPU to 1.700 but it's not helping temps much. Having an imbecile cooler like the Volcano 5 doesn't help. No access to a better HSF for atleast the next three months, as no decnt ones are available in the country.

In desperation, I've decided on running the CPU at 100FSB. I'll lose a lot of MHz, but it's stability I'm worried about. Since it'll be slower than the slowest XP (Actually I couldn't care less as I barely spend any time in my room on the computer nowadays: Just to surf and check mail and shut down) I'm scared the MB will have problems recognising it and running it stable. By my reckoning the CPU should be running at 1150 Mhz, which should be plenty fast for what I'll be doing.

My harddrives are in trouble, too. I've added blowing fans on two sides of the drives, but they still go up to about 49C/50c on the bad days. This is with the case sides off. I been thinking of removing the floppy drive altogether to get some air into the system. I rarely use it as it is.

Any thoughts/ideas? I have no access to stuff like watercooling and blocks and peltiers and stuff, but some ghetto way of keeping temps down would help.

Thanks

Sang

Open the windows!

I know the feeling

I like out in Japan and the room temp is a killer! what i did last summer out here was took both sides off and got a room fan blowing through the case as well as all the case fans and it also keeps you cool I found it brought my System temp to the standard temps during cooler periods. As for underclocking the
System will be fine i was using a Athlon 2000+ XP on 100 FSB for 2 weeks.But the room Fan works wonders Blows in one side out the other you just have to be carefull of debri flying in your case!!!

Another thing that you can try is since you have slowed your XP down so much is to try to run with a lot lower vcore than 1.7 volts. Keep dropping the core voltage down until it starts to get unstable, then pick it back up a little. I've heard of people doing this with Tualatin P3 procs and getting the vcore down to 1.2 volts or so, so they could make a real quiet machine with passive cooling. The lower you can get your core voltage, the better off you will be.

How about an AC.

Opening the window may not help because the temperatures outside are hotter than the inside.

I don't know much you can do either than dropping your speed now and dropping the vcore to a very minimal voltage.

Airflow would make probably no difference in this case since heat is too hard to fight off.

Dang dude I feel for you and the heat issues in your country, I hope things get better for you and your people down there.
I wouldn't look into a heatsink fan combo but rather a watercooling one. I know you said 3 months befor you could get one in your country but i would look into it personally. and keep the fans for the hard drive and the cdroms so forth.
BY the way how are customs there? mail wise?or i should say if you ordered something from the states how long would it take to get there?

How about you send some of that heat this way? The highest it's gotten so far is like 60º F maybe. Do you have a basement you could put your pc in? Cuz that would most likely help. Or if you have air conditioning you could get a tube and channel the cold air to your pc

Wow that's a lot of replies.

Yodums: Yeah, the outside is real, real hot. I do have an AC but it doesn't seem to be able to do much in this heat, and it's not practical or cheap to run it for a long period of time. Weekends at home I use it in the afternoon, but in the end the AC is just not able to bring room temps below about 29/30. Evenings and nights are a shade better but the rest of the time it's real bad.

I just backed off the FSB to 100 and am waiting to see how it will affect temps.

FarEast: that's a cool tip on the room fan. I'm buying one tomorrow.

muddocktor: Thanks for the Vcore tip. I'm going to try it now. Underclocking has helped out a bit, I'm seeing a 3 degree drop in the CPU temp. Maybe dropping Vcore will help a bit. I'm planning on moving my hard drives around a bit to increase the airflow on that front. Even my floppy disks are getting very hot.

theamdkid: Thanks for the kindness. Yeah I've been looking at watercooling I think the whole thing can be pulled off easily: Aquarium pump, radiator and a decent reservoir shouldn't be too hard to muster together. What isn't available is a waterblock, nor any info on how to make it.

I was planning on starting some experiments with an old HSF, chop off all the fins and seal it up using acrylic, etc. but I have absolutely no skills with a tool, so I have to depend on someone else. Which, as a hardcore DIYer I'm not gonna do.

Customs here is pretty pathetic. The only way you can get anything into the country without the 100% surcharge is to get it on a trip abroad, and get it one at a time. One of my friend's friend is in the US as of now, and I'm asking them to get me a nice Volcano 7+ or a heatpipe and a new GF4Ti4200 (which is what I think I can afford) when they return. Which is in about three months.

The same card cost umm.. about USD 364 equivalent in local currency after all customs and profit margins, if you buy off the street in India. The heatsink is not even available. The best you can get for your AMD cpus here is the Volcano 5. No one is willing to pay any more than that for heatsinks. Another reason why Intel is such a huge player in India, but I digress.

Shipping takes about three weeks. I actually don't mind going to say, Newegg and picking up a good thing but most retailers there don't ship here, or take credit card orders for overseas shipments. Which leaves me in a pretty hopeless position, as I have no way to issue foreign currency payments as I am not a certified Foreign exchange earner... it's very complex. Also shipping costs a fortune. I was planning to pick up my guitar on the 'net but the shipping cost was twice that of the guitar...

Thanks all. I'm gonna implement some of this stuff right away. The room fan I'm picking up tomorrow. I'll keep ya posted.

Sang

It has been very cool in Alabama lately. We had record lows for this time of year all of the eastern United States yesterday.

all I have to say is that you have an excellent grasp of the english language. Better than most american/british members of this forum


You are also following the correct procedures to cool your system down in the heat. I would pay attention to the hard drives. The CPU should be able to live in 50c+ enviroment but the sandwiched drives are just begging to fry. It may be a good idea to remove them from their positions and leave them on the bottom of your case. Direct the air down onto the drives to help cool them.


Goodluck

If you can, make the AC blow into the case which would help

I too would be more worried about the hard drives. It would melt in that kind of heat. How can you sit at the computer in that heat? Even with a fan doesn't seem like it's blowing hot air at you?

Antimatter: Believe me, there's nothing better I'd like to do. There's been a 2 degree drop last night, it's really helped.

Matthew: Sweet Home Alabama!

Stompah: Thanks for the compliment. Yes I moved the hardrives around and they're now separated by the floppy drive. The master drive is being well cooled by a fan blowing on from below. It's the slave I'm now worried about, it's not getting any form of airflow now: at all. However the master is now at 45 (manageable, I think) and the slave is going up to 47. When the drives were sandwiched, they were at 48/49/50 or so.

Poluga: It's terrible. I barely spend an hour or so at the machine nowadays.

I tried to play a few hours last night, just to check stability. Win2K is behaving perfectly, no problem at even 1.5 volts and 100 MHz, mem at 133 with fastest timings. Temps were respectable, about 43/44 or so which is extremely decent given that the ambient was 38/39. Unfortunately Win98 is not booting up at these settings, and with CPU at stock FSB and 1.7 volts, games are freezing up. I'm anyway off gaming for a few days now, with the heat. My CPU temps are not that frightening anymore, at stock everything and full load the temps read 55. Just 1 degeree below when the board will cut off power.

Thanks all for your advice. I've definitely seen the machine handle perfectly at 100 FSB and 1.5 volts, at least Win2K does. Since I'm not gaming, I won't need 98 for a few weeks and am not going to use it. I'm to buy a few room fans today and will try blowing some air into the case, and some cool air into the room.

Unfortunately since a lot of people share the AC room, I will have to live with the present arrangements. The upside is that I'm still alive and well, the comp can just be used for internet and general typing for a few days. The monsoons are expected by the next few weeks, when it all cools down Im going to put this guy back to stock settings and play some Deus Ex.

Sang

i think the large room fan blowing through the case with the sides off will work for you.if it were me i would get a large square window fan if available and build a cardboard shroud with cardboard and ductape to get all the airflow over your components. i used to have summer parties when it was super hot and i would use a fan like that on my stereo amp and it kept it going.without it,it would get too hot to touch,probably 130 F inside there without it.if you are worried about debris going through the fan into the case get a large furnace filter and tape it to the inake of the big fan.its a rig but i think it will keep you going.

Okay, ghetto watercooling assist...

Get a windshield washer pump out of a wrecked car, find a scrap fridge that's been vented, strip some copper tubing out of it, press some loops of the copper into the outside channels of the heatsink each side, (IF you use soft tubing, then hammering it in with a wooden wedge should give a tight fit) run that to the pump and into a bong type cooler, use anything you can find to make that, shower head, bucket, etc, try and find a fan for it though, they help good. You needn't fit a small one on the side or anything fancy if you can't find a case fan, if you have a wide bucket bong, a house fan blowing across the rim will move some air down that side of the bucket and up the other, which is where you'd want your shower head.

I figure that would assist you by about 10 degrees on the CPU temp when it was turned on. If you can find a 12V washer pump off a big truck or bus, then with a big bucket you might be able to get enough cooling effect to be able to put a loop or two of the tubing in front of the system fan to help system temps.
The benefit of this is that it's a helper system not a full watercooling conversion, so you needn't have it running on cooler days.

Road Warrior

RoadWarrior: WOW!! that doesn't sound too tough. Lemme have a go at this. I'll let you know how it goes.

I've fianlly convinced my folks that the comp will melt down if it is not cooled so they've let me use the AC in my room for a few hours when it's really hot. But this sounds really good for the long-term.

One clarification: A bong is like an outdoor AC unti right? The one that pours gallons of water off of its sides to run the main condensors? And this is all acessible stuff....

Thanks for this.