System Temperature

Servicing a PC that's running pretty hot and I'm not sure why.

P4 2.8 800MHz bus
Intel 865PERL motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 128M video
2G DDR 400 RAM
120G Seagate Serial-ATA hard drives X2 (Stripe RAID)

I'm running one extra rear chassis fan and two front chassis fans by the hdds. The hdd's seem to be running nice and cool. The rear exhaust seems abnormally warm. the video card runs pretty hot even when the system is idle.

When I run a cpu tester, the system temp utility reports the cpu at 63C (warning threshold default is 68). The system temp runs at 54 (threshold at 50). with all the ventilation it's got, this doesn't seem normal, does it?

FYI, I'm using a Zalman quiet power supply and cpu heatsink/fan.

What temperature should a PC run at comfortably?

Check the installation of the heatsink and fan. Look at the amount of thermal paste being used.

Are all the case fans blowing the right direction? Front should pull in, back should blow out.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Zalman are know for good silent cooling, not efficient cooling. If you want good temps, go with a real cooling setup, the noise isnt that bad.

don't worry, i had no bubble to begin with....

this was my first experience with zalman stuff. i was actually wondering if that could be part of the problem. you say it doesn't cool that well?

let me just ask this though...

if the zalman cpu heatsink/fan isn't cooling my cpu well enough, that might explain my cpu getting hot. but it wouldn't explain the overall system temp getting so hot, would it? actually, if the zalman was dissipating the cpu heat more efficiently, the system would even be hotter, because it would get MORE of the cpu's dissipated heat, right?

unless the zalman power supply is creating a lot of heat and leaking it into the system...


thanks for the help!