Will I see significant temperature drops? (CM 590 case swap)

[supreme]

I recently bought a Cooler Master 590 case, and a new Corsair CX400 PSU to go with it. Currently, I am using an HP media center PC in the stock micro case with stock cooling, and it can get pretty hot in there. My GPU currently idles at 65 degrees here in Florida.

I am just curious as to what kind of temperature decreases I can expect after I swap the cases and PSU? It is extremely clogged in my HP case and the PSU is usually hot to the touch after intense gaming. I have the cables managed as neatly as possible which doesn't really say much. I also rid the fans of dust regularly.

Here are my current specs:

Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Asus M2N68-LA MB
500GB SATA HD
2x2GB G.Skill 800
XFX 8600GT XXX
300W bestec PSU (stock)

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I built numerous pc's for friends, neighbors, and girlfriends using the CoolerMaster Centurion 590 case. The pc components were very similar to yours.

The case has pretty good ventilation, airflow, and cooling, especially since you can add a few extra fans. You can also add one of those CoolerMaster 4 in 3 bay devices with a 120mm fan. That would give you two 120mm fans sucking in cool air from the bottom front of the case. You can also mount two extra 120mm exhaust fans at the top rear of the case.

The 8600GT video card does not use very much power so heat should not be too much of a problem.

You mentioned the cpu was hot to the touch. Are you using a stock AMD heatsink and fan that came with the cpu? You can replace it with a third party cpu heatsink and fan that will do a much better job of cooling down the cpu:

http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

Use a good quality thermal compound when mounting the heatsink. Artic Silver 5 is pretty popular.

You can expect temperatures to be well within operating range for each component. I don't have any numbers for temps during gaming sessions as I am not a hardcore gamer.

 

[supreme]

Thanks for the reply! I havent recieved the case yet, so i'm not too sure about the location of the 2nd front fan you are referring to. But I am definitely looking for optimal cooling! Which fan locations would be the best to start off with? Say if I were only to buy 2 fans for now?

You mentioned the cpu was hot to the touch.

I said PSU

But surprisingly, the CPU doesn't get very warm. The stock HSF works pretty good even in my hot case. I think it will be fine in the new case as well.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

OOPS! My bad!

The case comes with one of the 4-in-3 bay devices with 120mm fan. It can be used to install 4 hard disk drives but only takes up 3 standard drive bays. It is mounted in the bottom front of the case.

The case also comes with a 120mm fan mounted on the rear panel near the top.

The back of the top panel has perforated mesh and mounting holes for two more 120mm fans. That's where you can mount two additional fans. They should be mounted so that they exhaust hot air out the top.

The classic configuration is to have cool air pulled into the bottom front of a case and hot air blown out the top rear of the case. It creates sort of a wind tunnel effect which helps cooling.

You can balance things out by adding a second 4-in-3 bay device with 120mm fan just above the one that comes with the case. Online vendors sell them.

The left side panel has perforated mesh and mounting holes for 120mm fans. You can add one there to either help cool your video card and/or cpu.

That would give you three 120mm fans pulling cool air into the case and three fans blowing out hot air. The stock CoolerMaster fans that come with the case are rated at 1,200 rpm which is pretty typical. There are other third party manufacturers that have 1,200 rpm fans that might move a little more air or might be a little more quiet. It just depends.