Case Fan question

My underpowered computer appears to be getting hot, so I picked up a fan today. Actually, I picked up an 80mm and 120mm fan because I could not decide what the cutout in my computer took. It actually appears to be a 90mm, so I was able to get the 80mm to fit with a washer I found and some determination.

I have two questions. My computer uses an A7V8X-LA (Kelut) motherboard. The only fans that were on the board were a CPU fan (circled in red) and the power supply fan. The fan I added is circled in yellow. The white elipse shows the vents at the bottom side of the case.

Should the case fan be exhaust or blow into the case? I currently have it set to exhaust assuming that cool air would be brought in through the vents.

The Antec 80mm tricool fan came with no instructions. I have it hooked up using the provided 3-pin plug hooked the the 3-pin case fan supply on the motherboard. Antec also provided an adapter to the 3-pin fan plug that split into a 3-pin to the motherboard and a 4-pin pass through that would share power with a CD or hard drive. Right now the fan is hooked to the motherboard directly and is working. What is the advantage of using the adapter to hook to the motherboard and a 4-pin power supply plug?

The tricool comes with a manual 3 speed switch in back. When I set it to high or medium the fan is on. When I set it to low it turns off the fan. Anvir reports that my computer temp is 104 degrees Farenheit. This is with the side of the case off.

OK, I answered one question for myself. I used the adapter to hook it up to the 4-pin and it appears to be getting much more power. On-line someone remarked that 4-pins are needed for 120mm, but it appears that even 80mm need to use them.

I'm still not clear on the exhaust/intake issue. Many recommendations are to have an intake fan in front and exhaust in the rear. My case only has a rear cutout for a fan.

Right now the temp is 93 degrees. The computer was off for a while and I also removed a lot of dust which can act as an insulator.

I'll see how high the temp goes with a little more use. I have hit 115 before. When this happened was usually when I had issues with the system recognizing CD drives and acting odd.

I believe you should be trying to create a negative pressue inside the case so that heat will be drawn out; therefore even if you do not have an intake fan in the front, your single case fan in the rear should be an exhaust fan. With a little cable management (zip strips) your rear exhaust fan should be able to draw air from the whatever vents the case has, across the hot components, and blow the heat out the back.

Especially if your case doesn't have a funnel to the side of the case to let that CPU fan blow out, you really need that exhaust fan to do something with the heat the CPU fan is blowing out into the interior of the case. :2cents:

Thanks. It's working well so far. I love Anvir Task Manager since it puts a display with internal temp onto my task bar. It's still 93 degrees, so it looks like the exhaust setup is working.

Good news.

Hey what's the best way to get XP to stop thinking my 500 GB drive is 131070 MB?

Just bringing this machine up for the first time and I guesss this is an old XP disc.

Load SP3 and then run a partition utility?

Flint;552893 wrote:

Good news.

Hey what's the best way to get XP to stop thinking my 500 GB drive is 131070 MB?

Just bringing this machine up for the first time and I guesss this is an old XP disc.

Load SP3 and then run a partition utility?

That's what I'd do. I like the partition manager built into XP SP3. It's close to idiot proof.

Then that will be perfect for me!

richlevy;552892 wrote:

Thanks. It's working well so far.

Does not matter which way air blows. What matter is CFM - cubic feet per minute. IOW all fans must move air in the same direction across the chassis.

In a 70 degree room that computer should be perfectly happy even without a fan. Fan is necessary so that the system also works happy in a 100 degree room.

93 degrees? What is that measuring? CPU? Then that is 93 degree C. Important is to know what the max CPU temperature is. But I bet that 93 is above manufacturer's specification.

CPU temperature in a 70 degree room must be so low that when room (and CPU) temperature increases 20 degree C, then CPU is still below maximum temperature.

Chassis fan should not be a solution. With the case open, what is CPU temperature? Open case temperature should be same with or without chassis fans.

What is the CPU heatsink fan rated for in 'degrees C per watt'. Doing that calculation, you know what CPU temperature should be. Does that calculated numbers agree with measured? If not (probably not), then you know where fault lies.

Intel or AMD CPU? If Intel, the heatsink could have become completely disattached. CPU would simply adjust so that CPU damage does not occur.

What would a second chassis fan do? Lowers chassis and CPU temperature (at best) only single digit degrees. At most, one chassis fan means temperature inside the chassis increase less than 10 degrees above room temperature. But again, I suspect your measurements are in degrees C; not F.

What is temperature actually measuring? Northbridge? Where temperature is being measured is where to start looking for a failure. Although not sure what your numbers actually are, those numbers are not acceptable for any typically measured location.

Flint,

Your machine may have an older BIOS that doesn't recognize 48-bit LBA mode and is capped at 128GB.

You can sliptstream your XP install and try that. If it still does not recognize your HD as the proper size, its a BIOS issue.

Flint;552893 wrote:

Good news.

Hey what's the best way to get XP to stop thinking my 500 GB drive is 131070 MB?

Just bringing this machine up for the first time and I guesss this is an old XP disc.

Load SP3 and then run a partition utility?

I'm a Case fan,......and I just want to know who her favorite rock band is?

kthxbai

tw;552906 wrote:

93 degrees? What is that measuring? CPU? Then that is 93 degree C. Important is to know what the max CPU temperature is. But I bet that 93 is above manufacturer's specification.

It's Farenheit. Anvir gives you a choice between measurements.

mbpark;552990 wrote:

Flint,

Your machine may have an older BIOS that doesn't recognize 48-bit LBA mode and is capped at 128GB.

You can sliptstream your XP install and try that. If it still does not recognize your HD as the proper size, its a BIOS issue.

It's an xfx nForce SLI, overclockers mobo--I don't think it has an "older BIOS" on it.
I thought the "127 GB drive" symptom was a known limitation of pre-service pack XP.

richlevy;553022 wrote:

It's Farenheit. Anvir gives you a choice between measurements.

93 degrees F in a Northbridge (?) chip is nothing and would not be changed by additional case fans.

As an experiment (and once it is determined where the measurement is being taken), stick a cheap heatsink on that chip. A lower temperature would confirm what is being measured. If its 93 degrees F inside a chip, that chip is living the good life and would be happy even when the room temperature rises to 120 degree F. An old rule for semiconductors (that I even learned in the early 1960s) - if you touch it and don't leave skin, then it is not too hot. Semiconductors even at those tepid temperatures are not physically harmed.

But again, first establish what is being measured where.

Flint;553117 wrote:

I thought the "127 GB drive" symptom was a known limitation of pre-service pack XP.

Drive limitation is a function of software on the motherboard. When the BIOS limitation exists, then Window's Disk Manager would not permit that drive to be partitioned beyond that BIOS limitation.

Meanwhile, many disk manufacturers provide a BIOS extender software on a CD rom.

Flint,

I haven't seen one of those CDs in years. Seriously. They stopped making them 7 years ago. The patch was included in SP2, which came out in 2004. They haven't had those CDs available in a few years :).

There were some older Dell models that had the issue in hardware too, which is why I specifically mentioned the BIOS.

Better to just grab a copy of AutoStreamer or a similar program, integrate SP3 into a copy of your installation CD using a process called "slipstreaming", and install that way.

I have had very bad experience with partition managers on boot volumes. You are better off installing onto the full 500GB and then working from there. The only programs that I have found to work even somewhat correctly were the Western Digital drive rescue programs for straight drive upgrades on a PC, and I used those under Windows 2000 Professional with the W2K version of the patch.

Even then, I saw issues with programs that used Microsoft Installer "reinstalling" themselves, specifically Visual Studio.

Slipstream it, do it right, and do it once :).

Flint;553117 wrote:

It's an xfx nForce SLI, overclockers mobo--I don't think it has an "older BIOS" on it.
I thought the "127 GB drive" symptom was a known limitation of pre-service pack XP.

Yes, I will be reinstalling the OS. I just used the disc I had on hand at the time.

lumberjim;552993 wrote:

I'm a Case fan,......and I just want to know who her favorite rock band is?

kthxbai

;)