Small Form Factor Better Cooling?

Well getting reedy for the next quakecon I am starting to think about things that I can do to my shuttle X. I have an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ at 1.91Ghz, and 640 MB of RAM. My video card is an ATI 9800Pro with 256. Using Motherboard Monitor 5 I usually run at 48C at the CPU and a degree cooler for the case. When I play any game it go’s up to about 51-2C. I was looking at the room above the CPU and can see about an inch and a half to two inches. My question is dose anyone know of a heatsink that could fit in that room, or am I looking for something that isn’t there? I would like to sum how drop a few degrees. Any ideas? The other thing is that I would like better cooling for my ATI but I only have 3-4mm from the existing fan to put on another, anything their ether?

Thanks, Samurai75007

 

WHat system are you using exactly? You mentioned shuttle and if it's got the ICE heatsink you really won't get lower temps with another heatsink. Your best bet is to cut the rear fan grill, replace the stock fan with a good replacement (panaflo or papst), clean the CPU and use arctic silver 5 to transfer. You may also consider modding a 120mm fan on the back via an adaptor as this can drop several degrees from your system temps also making it quieter. Then there's replacement of the stock cooler with arctic cooler or evercool, cable sleeving/tidying, passive NB heatsink replacement, case meshing, PSU modding etc, etc. The evercool heatsinks don't require case cutting whereas the arctic cooler does (although the exhaust is external and it's quieter).

TBH though your temps look fine for your CPU. Do you have readings for the graphics card?

 

I didnt know that you can get a tep. from the video card... whut program can do that if the one I have cant?

 

You should be able to read your card temps either from the ATI control panel or from a temp/fan control program such as speedfan. If you can't see the graphics card temp on the control panel then I'm afraid your card doesn't have a thermometer so you're stuffed (unless you use a manual reader).

It takes a lot of heat to kill a GPU but less for the RAM. If you use a cooler that doesn't cool the RAM make sure to use BGA sinks that are well attached. You can use AS5 on the graphics card aswell

 

OK, I got speedfan and it pics up my vid card, 44C.

 

If you want consierable lower temps for longer game playing, then watercooling is your answer. Have a look at my sig for my project.

 

44 degrees is pretty good. If your temps stay below say 60-70 degrees load you can keep the original cooler, or go for an evercool & some sinks for a quick and easy quietening solution. Watercooling is always an option but you'll be lucky to pick a GPU/CPU kit for less than £200 and it's fiddly as hell (I want to do it myself but I'm skint)

 

If you're up for a little modding...

Put some mesh over the graphics card fan; it should run colder when it's sucking room-temperature air instead of whatever's in your case.

Add a blowhole! There should be enough space for an 80mm fan, with a bit of squshing...

 

Unfortunately blowholes in shuttle do little good. Even if it's running at 50% the average 80mm fan will only drop case temps by a couple of degrees. The increased fan noise and more importantly turbulance of the main airflow also makes buckets more noise. An easy option is to use a single slot cooler and a shuttle mesh cover if you're feeling lazy.