[NTLUG:Discuss] PC Hardware Issue

[Gilbert Morrow]

In the past when I did custom case mods and water cooling I found power
supply to be a culprit more than once , start OCing and the PS could not
keep up , either GPU or CPU , to many fans etc .
I run Shuttles now and they do tend to get a little hotter than a large or
medium tower .
Drives do get hot but putting the hot air from the drives into the case is
bad , or disrupting the designed air flow of the case with fans that suck or
push additional air .
I have in the past also pulled the heat sink off the GPU and put Arctic
Silver in place of the white paste , not recommended unless you know what
you are doing .

On 12/21/06, Robert Pearson <e2eiod at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/21/06, steve <sjbaker1 at airmail.net> wrote:
> > Dennis Myhand wrote:
> > > Lenrek Xunil wrote:
> > >> I built my own PC.  It's got an Abit motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 CPU,
> > >> 1.5gigs of ram (two cards), dual graphics card,
> >
> > Dual graphics cards?  Aha!
> >
> > Are they nVidia cards using 'SLI' mode?
> >
> > If so, I would say for 100% sure that one of your two graphics cards
> > has crapped out - possibly from the heat - but it could just be failing.
> >
> > If you have two graphics cards using nVidia's "SLI" then the two
> > cards share the rendering.  If one of them fails, the result is indeed
> > a horribly "jaggy" display.
> >
> > So - I recommend you remove one of the two cards and see if the system
> > stabilises.  If it doesn't then try the other graphics card by itself.
> >
> > Then you know that either:
> >
> > 1) The card you removed is bad...or...
> > 2) The system is overheating when there are two cards - but not when
> >     there is only one.  This would not be surprising because those
> >     high end graphics cards chuck out a lot of heat.
> > 3) Your power supply isn't up to driving such a high end configuration.
> >     Modern graphics cards eat a LOT of power (that's why they generate
> >     so much heat).
> >
> > So if this fixes things - try replacing the 'working' graphics card
> > with the one you pulled out.
> >
> > If the system is still stable - then there is nothing wrong with either
> > graphics card but your cooling or your power supply is not adequate for
> > both of them running at the same time.
> >
> > If they system does not stabilize - then you've found the bad graphics
> > card.
> >
> > Even if your graphics cards are not in SLI mode - the odds are good that
> > you are overheating or running out of power.
> >
> > To find out if you're overheating, get a really good household 'box
> > fan', take the lid off the computer and blast air into it as hard as
> > you can.  If it still fails - it's not overheating!
> >
>
> Great troubleshooting procedure.
>
> With regard to heat problems.
> Does monitoring, or taking the exhaust air temperature help determine
> problems?
> Any ideas out there about the "normal" temperature across a box?
> Measuring airflow CFM (cubic feet per minute) is a little tough but
> that would be  good to know for designing a solution. Brute force is
> probably cheaper. But isn't too much air flow worse than not enough?
>
> In my box the SATA drive got so hot you couldn't touch it. The guy at
> the computer store said his did the same and recommended either one of
> those "cool" enclosures or the "attach to the SATA drive" dual fan
> module. I just parked the SATA drive and used an IDE (PATA) I had. I
> did determine the fans were adequate but the airflow pattern missed
> the SATA drive. Bad case design.
> I'm thinking eSATA for the future. Get the heat sources out of the case.
>
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