Hey there, I was participating for a championship race last night, and unfortunately 2 minutes into the race *after an hour of qualifying* the details of the game started to flick a lot, and come out of their detailing.

It wasn't long before the PC froze, and crashed on me. It happened twice yesterday, only because there wasnt enough air coming through the opened windows. *Hence the summer*

I gave the PC a clean, got rid of a majority of dust. But is there any recommendations on keeping it cool?

I'm getting a new PC soon, the case isnt reliable anymore, and doesnt really help the cooling, so I opened the cases for that.

I do have an Exhaust blower, should I put that next to my graphics card? (nVIDIA 6800GT 256MB)

Do you have the stock nVidia cooler or a custom one? I think it was your GFX card that overheated - about half a year ago I had the same problems with my 6600GT. The first one died because of this but the replacement card (yay for warranty) wasn't any better. No amount of cleaning and tweaking and altering the airflow helped, after a half an hour of play it was at 90°+, faster if I played something more graphics intense than LFS, like RBR. At some point I even had an extra fan that directly blew cool air on the GFX card, but to no avail.

Finally I replaced the stock cooler with a Zalman and never had problems since.

When replacing the stock cooler I found two things:
1) everything was drowning in heat sink compound
2) the cooler didn't fully touch the memory chips, the only connection between them was a blob of beforementioned paste

My conclusion:
Stock coolers may suck. Hard.

My advice:
Measure your card temperature during extended periods (with NVTempLogger for example, but I think the newest ForceWare software also has a temp diagram included). If it gets too hot (> 75°?), buy a third party cooler.

Ideally you want at least 2 good fans, one on the front of the case and one on the back, place the front fan to suck air in and the rear fan to blow air out, this will cause air to flow through the case continously and will help cool, if you can add fans to the sides then do so, the more the better...

If this is not possible, take the side off you case and place a desk fan blowing air directly into the case, not very nice, very big, but it does work!!!!

Quote from Thorvertonian :

If this is not possible, take the side off you case and place a desk fan blowing air directly into the case, not very nice, very big, but it does work!!!!

If the stock cooler is shitty, not even that helps

Buy a decent CPU cooler/ GFX card cooler.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... Catalogue_Zalman_398.html
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... e_Arctic_Cooling_395.html
Buy rounded IDE cables, make sure the flow through the case is as free as possible.
Watercooling, I have had mine water-cooled for a year and it bearly cracks 30DEG.

Dan,

I can defo vouch for the zalman coolers. I bought one for my 6600GT (a notoriously hot card) and after fitting saw a 10 - 15 degree drop in temps under idle and full load - well worth it.

If you're looking at a new case, I can recommend the Antec P180 - it has a slightly different layout with the psu at the bottom and in its own section along with the HDDs. I cant say I've actually noticed a drop in system temps since using it, but its a pleasure to use, looks amazing (black and aluminium look) and has plenty of cooling opportunity (4x 120mm fan slots). Also has littel things like removable dust filters etc

Do you have a picture of it?

I'm getting a new pc, simply by keeping the ram, graphics card, sound card, with a new motherboard and processor *Athlon 3200+*

It's something to keep the pc cool for the time being.

Now here is a question that rattles my nut in, and I keep forgetting. Which way does the fan rotate when it sucks air in and blows air out?

Hold on an I'll get a pic of my PC insides etc.

Quote from BigDave2967 :

Now here is a question that rattles my nut in, and I keep forgetting. Which way does the fan rotate when it sucks air in and blows air out?

what?

Normally a fan rotates clockwise if you look at it from above. This side is also the side the air is being sucked from.

So:
If you see it rotating clockwise then you're in danger of suffocating
If you see it rotating counter-clockwise then it blows air in your face

Hope that helped

Ah thanks .

Or wait... was it the other way round? Google image search suggests this :doh:

Whatever, just plug it in on your PC and turn it on, you'll see soon enough in which direction it's blowing. The normally easily identifyable "top side" of the fan always blows away from you.

Right taken some pics so you can get an idea of the case and the cooling:

Woah, how much was that?!

Think the case was about £90 when I bought it, you can get them for about £70 now though

Its quite a bit, but well worth the premium - I've had a few cheap cases before and they're a nightmare to work with usually.

Hmm, that is a bit too pricy, I was after cases roughly around the 30 quid margain, and some of them had fans attached on the sites.

Here is what I am going for.

Athlon 3200+
Motherboard to support processor *Socket 939?*
Case
PSU 300+ watt.

I have everything else, just these parts im pricing at the moment.