Heating issues, possible air flow problems?

[gso10]

Hello all! I hope this is the appropriate sub-forum for this post, as I checked a couple other of the sub forums to see if this was the right place or not.

Around the end of 2010 beginning of 2011 I started building my own gaming rig with the advice from friends and others around me who built their own rigs. Since then I've been slowly adding upgrades in various phases with their suggestions. Around March/April of this year I finally installed an SSD, 2 additional TB hard drives for programs and storage, and a sound card. Now before this I never noticed any performance issues that I can remember, but after installation of the new parts I started noticing performance issues playing games (Most notably BF3). I always run my game settings on high or ultra depending on the game. After playing BF3 for an hour or so my PC would get lines across the screen and my PC would crash. Other games I could play for longer and notice not as bad of issues but problems none the less.

I figured my video card was going bad but it troubled me that it was only a year or two and my decent video card was already frying up?! So me and my friends started doing various tests to try and determine what my PC was actually doing. I downloaded Speccy to watch various components and their heats and I noticed my CPU was getting dangerously hot. I looked up the temp for it and noticed that it was running a little on the hot side (exact numbers slip my mind now). I talked it over with my friends and we came to the conclusion that perhaps I just didn't have enough power to run all my fans and everything optimally as at the time of installing the new hard drives and sound card I only had a 750w.

Fast forward a couple months (as I just quit using the PC all together until I had the parts to run it properly or so I thought and used my macbook instead) me and my friends are installing a 1000w PSU and the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU heatsink. Seems to be running much better now then previously this year. However there still seems to be issues I was hoping you could help me with.

My video card idles at around 51 degrees Celsius unless my AC is running which it's then around 10 degrees Celsius cooler. When I game I have to go into MSI Afterburner and turn up the fan to keep the heat down and it's usually anywhere from 70-85 degrees Celsius depending on duration of gaming session and the game.

Am I wrong in thinking I'm running too hot? What are some ways I can reduce my heat inside my case. I think my airflow inside the case isn't optimal as cables might be in the way. I'm just not sure on how I should go about fixing this?

Case: Coolermaster RAF 942 (with 1 rear 120 mm fan and 120mm fan on top installed I believe)
PSU: Coolermaster 1000w RSA00-AMBAJ3-US
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T w/ a Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo heatsink
GPU: Radeon HD 6870 1gb
RAM: 4x4 GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance (Model Number: CMZ8Gx3m2a1600c9)
Mobo: Asus Xtreme Design M4A89GTD
Sound Card: Asus Xonar Essence STX
Hard Drives:
60GB Kingston KINGSTON SV100S264G ATA Device (SSD)
932GB Western Digital WDC WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0 ATA Device (SATA)
1397GB Western Digital WDC WD15EARS-22MVWB0 ATA Device (SATA)
932GB Western Digital WDC WD10EACS-22ZJB0 ATA Device (SATA)

Also if anyone could clue me into ways of making sure I'm optimizing my machine and I'd appreciate it. I feel like I have to many heating issues.

Sorry once again if this is the wrong forum for this thread. I look forward to hearing all of your expertise!

 

[mrclownface]

do you have any intake fans on your case?,i think that case comes with a 200mm fan at the front

 

[gso10]

Yes I have a fan in the front. I always have problems figuring out if the fan is an intake or an exhaust (It's hard for me to tell if the fan is sucking or spitting out).

 

[CM_USA]

Front and side fans are intakes and top and back fans are exhaust. Exhaust fans the fan should be blowing the air out of the case, while intake fans, the fan should be blowing air into the case.

 

[gso10]

If I were to take pictures of the inside of my case would anyone be able to give me tips to increase air flow efficiency within the case? Maybe if I move some wires around I can decrease temps inside the case.

 

[popatim]

sure

 

[anxiousinfusion]

Yes I have a fan in the front. I always have problems figuring out if the fan is an intake or an exhaust (It's hard for me to tell if the fan is sucking or spitting out).

Look at the curvature of the fan. The side of the blade that is concave is responsible for pushing the air like the face of a propeller. The convex side of the blade should face outward for intake fans and inward for exhaust fans.

EDIT: The face of a propeller is the side that faces the pilot.

 

[gso10]

Thanks anxious, thats a quick way of remembering that. I'll keep that in mind in the future, but still no luck on the GPU temps. :/ Still working on getting a decent camera to take pictures as well! But now my PC won't load at all! I have a flashing DRAM led light with no output going to my monitor! My friend brought down his GPU to switch out to see if the vid card fried out but still no luck! I hate PCs