Need Case suggestions and CPU cooler suggestions for D945GPM

[BlackHeart]

Hi,

I bought a PC tower with a D945GPM motherboard (775 socket) that has a Foxconn cpu fan on what I assume must be a Foxconn Heatsink. The cpu chip is a Pentium D 840 90nm technology dual core. It sits in a tower case with one 90mm fan in the back and a 350w power supply in the back at the top of the tower. I downloaded the Intel desktop utilitys and ran a stress test for 8 hours during the day. The room temperature got as high as 85 degrees fahrenheit. The Intel utilities (and I also used speedfan) shows the CPU temperature reaching 87 degrees Celsius. Intel specs say the processor case should not go over 69.8 degrees and the motherboard specs say the heatsink weight should not exceed 450 grams. I removed the heatsink and checked that thermal paste was applied and it was. The footprint of the thermal paste seems to indicate that the cpu chip or the heatsink may have a slight curvature to it as the paste was thicker towards two of the edges of the heatsink but was thin toward the center. I also layed the case on its right side and saw the cpu temperatures drop as much as 7 degrees Celsius. I thought that was really weird and it made me wonder if a horizontal desktop case might be better than a tower case for cooling. There is a shroud from the left side of the case that meets up with the cpu fan to pull in cool air from outside the case and the cpu fan blows air into the heatsink toward the motherboard.

I am looking for a new case and cpu/heatsink to to replace the ones I have and would like to hear suggestions from the members here.

 

[DeathwingX]

alot of it depends on how much room you have to put stuff, i would go with a full tower case if posible. newegg and tigerdirect have good choices and can ship to almost anwhere in the united states and ive herd they can ship into canada. as far as cooling, i would look at wussys C2D ocing guide, they have some good air coolers, and water cooling is always an option

 

[BlackHeart]

I ordered a Arctic freezer Pro 7 and an Antec Nine hundred case to try to address my problems. I hope to see the parts in the next couple of weeks and then post the results back here. I saw a post where the Antec Nine hundred case might have a problem with some motherboards on the video slot as a person stated that he could not plug in his dvi video connectors. Im not using that slot right now but I hope I have not made a mistake by ordering this case.

Problem stated by a user on his Antec Nine Hundred case

 

[BlackHeart]

I got the Arctic Freezer Pro 7 today and ran Stress tests before and after.

Room temperature was 79 degrees Fahrenheit.

Before...

CPU 80 Celsius, Internal 54 Celsius, Remote 50 Celsius, Hard Drive 38 Celsius.

After...

CPU 66 Celsius, Internal 60 Celsius, Remote 44 Celsius, Hard Drive 42 Celsius.

I only expected the CPU to drop by 6 degrees Celsius but it dropped by 14 degress Celsius!!!

The noise level is much less now and the PC is in my bedroom so I get a double bonus. Less noise and peace of mind. I think I will sleep much better tonight.

I think the Antec Nine hundred case will be here tommorrow or the next day. I hope to move all the guts of this pc to the new case this weekend and run some more stress tests when the new case is up and running.

 

[BlackHeart]

Well, I missed the shipment and had to go out to the Fedex place to pick up the case. I just got it home an hour ago and took it out. The case had a couple of dents in the side toward the top on the right side (like a philips screwdriver was placed against it and hit sharply with the palm of the hand). Looks like it had to have happened at the factory because the shipping box and foam inserts were in great shape. No paint is missing where the dents are and I tried to pop them back out the best I could. The back and top fans are pretty quiet on the high setting but the front two fans are louder on the high setting. I may have to run the front fans on the medium setting. The case and fan power connecters are not the best quality I have seen when compared to other cases I own or have owned. The side covers metal thickness is pretty thin and the sides flex a little when I have them off ( but I will not say its made of beer cans ). The case is not up to what I expected quality-wise. The firewire and USB connectors on top of the case also appear to be low-quality. I had to work at getting the fans power connectors hooked to a spare power supply that I used to test the fans. I will start looking at the motherboard standoffs and see what I have to do to prepare moving the guts from the old case into this one. One of the reviews that I read said that $150 was too much for the case and that it should sell for around $100 (which is what I bought this one for) and I think I know why that statement was made now. Maybe Antec will release another version of this case with thicker metal and some quality connectors in the future. I guess the case is ok but I cannot give a whole hearted stamp of approval to others based on my opinion of the case. I am hoping I do not experience any case vibration noises when I get the system built.

More opinions later...

 

[BlackHeart]

I got most of the guts transferred from the old case to the new Antec nine hundred case. This case is running lower temperatures than the old case and I cannot even feel heat coming out of the power supply anymore. Here the comparison, same Intel D945GPM motherboard, 1gig ram with an Intel Pentium D 840 dual processor chip.

Room temperature 72 degrees Fahrenheit.

All temperatures below are Celsius...

..................CPU temp...Internal temp...Remote temp...Hard Drive temp

OLD(fans high).......64................53..................39...................33

New(fans high).......59................34..................26...................26
........MAX CPU

New(fans low)........60................40..................28...................28
........MAX CPU

New(fans low)
.......(CPU idle)........45................35.................28....................27

The Antec case is really quiet with all the fans set to low. The CPU fan would run around 2900-3000 rpm constantly during the stress test with the old case but it only runs around 900-1100 rpm in the new case with all the fans set to low.

When the CPU is idle the CPU fan runs around 400 rpm.

I really like this case now but I still have reservations about the top pci express slot on my motherboard as that is where I will be putting a PCI express video card. It looks like I might not be able to plug the video connector on the video card but I will not know until I make a decision on what video card to buy and actually buy it. It will just be inconvenient to have to take everything back out of the case and take my metal cutoff wheel to remedy this situation should it occur.