Thermal probes ROCK!

digitalwanderer

Wheee! I finally got my thermal paste in the other day, and of course I had to pick up a few way-too-tempting bargain bin items....

The pax.mate case liner stuff is the SH1T! It hasn't exactly silenced Bubbles, but it's given her a much better tone. She's a bit softer, but her fan noise has more resonance and a lot less of the irritating whine factor. At $10us I can safely recomend it. (Oh, and it's easy and looks cool. IMHO. )

The other fun thing I picked up was the Enermax UC-001TM2 Temperature Monitoring Driver Rack, which is basically just a driver rack with a faceplate with some thermal monitor displays stuck in it. It would look nice on the front of any box, but Bubbles is mounted under my desk sideways so it wouldn't work out so hot for her....so I just stuck the faceplate with the probes underneath my monitor and ran the wires straight into my box threw one of her many orifices. (It ain't meant to be permanent, I have a LOT of crazy ideas on things to measure with 'em. )

Funny thing, my first run with it taught me something! I have one probe on the memory on the 'front' of my radeon and one probe on the memory on the 'back' of my radeon, and the 'back' side is running about 2C hotter and even more so under load. I figured out that the GPU fan on the 'front' is helping out the memory cooling, so I'm gonna try slapping a fan on the back to see if that'll help me out.

Just thought I'd mention how much fun a couple of thermal probes can be, just another fun meter stick to help you truly push the boundaries of OCing.

reno

Paxmate is cool...but my panaflo fans are really bassy...ah well, as long as the sound is loud enough...

digitalwanderer

What's a panaflo fan? (I know I could google it, I'd rather have a personal opinion. )

reno

A Panasonic case fan, known for their extremely high CFM outputs, but their relatively quiet operation at low RPMs. They DO pump out about twice as much air as normal fans, and are quiet, but are bassy...kinda a very low tone.

skastel

I recently got a DigiDoc5, and WOW! it's awesome. At the touch of one button my PC goes into silent mode. Only the CPU and a PCI fan are on. The other 5(overkill eh?) turn off. At full load with the fans on I'm at about ~46C, idles at about 41. Without the case fans, it's about 49-50C idle-medium load, full load about 53C, so I avoid stressing the comp in quiet mode. I have an AX-7 with an adjustable YS-Tech Fan, man it's a cool setup, I wish I had bought it sooner, my poor roomate last year had to suffer through all 5 fans plus a little 60MM 8000rpm screamer HSF! 80MM HSF are the way to go IMO.
Reno: where did you get the Panaflo's and how much do they go for?

DjGizmo

Man Skastel what processor are you running? i ain't spent almost any money on my cooling... got a SK6 on offer for 30€(cheap for my country anyway) rigged that up to a spare already quiet 80mm case cooling fan( which i then ran it at 7v) then added another intake fan just like it to the front, killed the fan on my Radeon (I cut the little bastard up using some wire cutters) and attatched a 60mm slightly louder Sunon fan (using a series of rubber bands to minimise vibration)which i ran at 5V... i then silenced my HDD using a series of surplus mouse pads and i can now barely even hear my machine when i start it up... Oh yeah and it's an Xp 1800 and it runs at around 51 degrees under heavy load... solid as a rock. i've found that all those extra hardware monitors are pointless... just run sufficient case cooling at low voltage and rig up a quiet undervolted 80mm fan to your copper heatsink and you're all set. no bullshit.

digitalwanderer

A man after me own heart! I got give the mousepad & rubberband tricks a try, great ideas!

DjGizmo

you don't actually have to spend that much money on cooling... the difference in temps between a system with 1 well placed case cooling fan and one with 6 isn't necessarily that much unless your system produces a helluva lot of heat... just as long as the air doesn't get trapped in there so the inside your case heats up too much... i have a spare power supply which i power up using a paper clip and i use it as a test bench... i hook up all my components to that before sticking em in my machine and that way i can see how noisy each individual component is on its own... you'd be surprised how quiet 5 or even 7 volts really is... it might be your power supply that's the loudest component in your pc... i modded myself one... got one for $3,50 form some computer auction and modded the 92mm fan in it... painted the blades of it yellow (note: this requires taking it apart)... and then added another 80mm fan to the PSU...
as for the rubber bands... hell i use em everywhere... i didn't have any rubber grommets so used rubber bands instead when i mounted my HDD at the top of my case, just above my DVD drive... used a spare "floppy disk drive mounting kit" and placed the rubber bands in four different places...
when i swapped the radeon fan i did it because the original one was so fooking crappy and it was loud as hell(powermagic don't know the meaning of the word:quality)... the first time i couldn't figure out a way of mounting the 60mm fan other than the rubber bands... i just sorta improvised... i later found a much neater way of doing it... i really can't describe it... and if i had a digicam i'd show you... it looks so cool... anyway you just sorta have to improvise and all will be well.
i can't take credit for the mouse mat idea... i do believe it was Japala or someone that came up with that one.
oh yeah and the SK6 normally takes a 60mm fan(that's where i got the sunon for my 8500LE) but it's surprisingly easy to attach an 80mm one instead of it because of the mounting mecanism on it. why pay money for a silencer for your hdd when you can get almost the same result with stuff you can get for free... and besides, it's more original the other way... yes the store bought prodicts are probably quieter but keep on mind that your other cooling makes some noise anyway... unless you water cool in which case you're either gonna need a huge ass reservoir and you won't be able to go to lans, or a radiator with huge 120mm suckers blowing away the heat. when all said and done, i'm pretty proud of my "more economical cooling methods." the whole modding/ overclocking industry has become too commercialised... people feel that they need a brand new Lian Li if they wanna have a cool system... Well there'll be no Lian Li's in my house... that's for sure...