Cooling the air before the intake fan?

[M Thompson]

Iv been looking for a similar thread but haven't been able to find one. I recently overclocked my AMD Phenom II 940. Would it harm my computer if I just stuck a bowl of ice, or a re-usable ice pack in front of my intake fan?

My main worry would be introducing moisture into the system, but could that be avoided by just covering the ice or ice pack with one extra layer, of say plastic wrap or paper towel?

I would only really use this when playing some of the newer games that seem to run fine until the CPU hits 60-62c, where from what Iv read, my CPU is under clocking itself to lower its own temps and performance drops as a consequence.

 

[atticus999]

Are you using stock cooling and how big of an overclock are we talking?...There are a lot of questions I have about your set up since you want to cool the intake fan with a bowl of ice. Overall, that is not going to be a sufficient way to cool your cpu or pc as a whole and I wouldn't attempt that because it's not going to be effective. Unless you can adjust the ambient temperature of the room (a lot of ice). If you're going to overclock you need to watch your voltage (could be the culprit to your high temp levels) adjust them as needed. Also looking into getting a aftermarket cooler if you don't already have one, there are some great affordable ones out there.

Hope that helps

 

[M Thompson]

Yea all stock cooling. Went from 3.0 to 3.5, no voltage increase required. It will idle around 35-45 and most games don't push it to 62, but I was shooting to run Bioshock: Infinite on Ultra, which made it really hot really fast but looked fine to me before it gets too hot.

 

[M Thompson]

Thanks for the response. My line of thinking was ice might radiate enough cool air to 'simulate' the PC being outside or by an open window in the winter, as I have read some people will do.

 

[atticus999]

Yeah, I understand the idea behind it I just would invest in a better cooler honestly. I think that's whats going to solve your problem. Is that 35-45 idle with OC? If so maybe you could try a little undervolting see if that helps at all a few degrees really goes a long ways.

 

[M Thompson]

Yep, that's with the OC. 45c might be a high estimate of idle temp because that's what I'm sitting at right now, refreshing this page and running and chatting on Steam.

While I'm reluctant to spend money (I'm cheap) I am also deathly afraid of ruining my machine, because it's all I'v got. I suppose I should just knuckle up and buy a new cooling unit or install another fan or two on my case. Do you have any recommendations for good 'bang for your buck' cooling units?

 

[atticus999]

Definitely man.
probably if not the most popular air cooler on the market:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065

I've also heard good things about this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835233082

Yeah, definitely worth it to spend the 20 bucks and get a reliable cooler than kill your cpu--that's never fun ><

Also, you have some fan space available use it up. Fans can be fairly cheap more airflow the better.

 

[M Thompson]

Hm, under volting might be worth a try. Problem might be that it will become unstable. I found after much testing that 3.5 is the highest I could go without voltage increases, and when I did try going to say, 3.6 with a .025 volt increase the temps were through the roof and I immediately undid that.

Still, probably wont hurt to try.

I don't really have fan space except possibly for one on the front of my case where there are 2 empty drive bays. Then the question is about airflow and positive / negative air pressure and all that.

 

[atticus999]

Positive pressure is always best. I've seen people take their back exhaust fan and flip it as an intake just to get more pressure in the case. Play around with undervolting a little see if you can get something stable using Prime95 to help with it. What's your current voltage?

 

[M Thompson]

Thank you for the suggestions. That COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 looks like a solid buy, maybe some new thermal paste to go with it.

Current voltage under load is 1.325 I'm pretty sure, I left the "auto" setting on my bios for that.

EDIT: Downloaded Prime95 and it looks like I am 1.328 V under stress.

 

[atticus999]

no problem man.

Well worth it, I'd say go for it.

---> the thermal paste you want: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100007

 

[atticus999]

How are your temps with 1.328V while running Prime?

 

[M Thompson]

My eyes kinda bugged out when it jumped up to 65 in no time at all, but I suppose that's the whole point of the program. Since its still cold in my area I think I'll stick to opening the window and just put on my long johns when its time to get into serious gaming, to try and keep the ambient temperature as low as possible until I get the new cooling unit in. Being in the basement it is already lower than the rest of the house by about 5 degrees (coupled with an awful heat pump system) but its 7c outside and I want to let some of that in. Once this rig gets warmed up its a wicked space heater.

 

[atticus999]

wow, 1.328V should not be jumping the heat like that.. at least in my experience but every chip is not created equal. yeah prime95 is as awesome stability test for ocing. I bet that thing is an awesome space heater! Well, maybe lower your overclock to 3.2ghz if it will stabilize that's still better than nothing. In the mean time open a window (try not to freeze!) get a new cooler and see how things go. OCing can be a lot of fun but unfortunately there are obstacles like heat><. Also, keep trying to undervolt here and there even at stock GHz undervolting can be beneficial and use prime to help solidify your ocing with any under or over volting.

Hope I helped a little. Good luck!

Also, max temperature for that chip is 62C and I believe max Vcore is 1.55, I recommend going no where near that.

 

[M Thompson]

You were absolutely helpful, I had no idea about Prime95 for stress testing. I would just load up Farcry 3 or some other new game and play, BSOD or restarts meant unstable. Your suggestions were also spot on for a new cooler. From some of the stuff I read the temp has to do with the 45 nm lithography of my chip (AMD Phenom II x4 940) but that goes way over my head to understand what that means.