SG01 running hot

[Womble548]

Just got a SFF box and moved everything into it. It seems to be running very hot though. Realtemp says 35 idel but coretemp says 50 idle. At load it hits 60-70. My specs are:

E4300 not overclocked
Corsair 520w modular
NT06 lite
7600GT
2gb ram in 4 slots
asus p5k-vm

Also - what setup of the three fans do you recommned. I have top/side blowing out, and the back one blowing in atm

I know the graphics runs hot normally (going to get a new one soonish - 8800gt or new nvid/ati)

 

[TWO515TY]

I think it's your cooler. From what I've read, the fan on the 520HX doesn't spin fast enough to work well with the NT-06. I have an E4500 at 3 ghz in a similar setup, except I have a Zalman 7700 and I usually idle between 35°C and 40°C. I forgot what my load temps were (I stopped gaming and don't really care about my temps anymore), but I bet if you moved to an active cooler you'd get better temps.

Also, the E4300 is an older generation C2D and does run a little hotter (but not much I think).

As far as the fans, I think my back one blows out, but I don't know if that makes a significant difference on the CPU temps.

When you get your graphics card, I'd highly recommend you upgrade to dual slot cooling if your card is a single slot card. It'll give you much better temps and let your whole system run cooler.

 

[tiraides]

You have to keep in mind that most (if not all) power supply fans aren't designed to serve as the sole exhaust point(s) in a computer. Only the Silverstone ST50EF-SC 500W power supply is designed to work that way, but even that's not 100% effective.

The problem with most CPU coolers inside the SG01 is that the limited space between the CPU fan and the PSU fan creates a vacuum effect -- due to the CPU cooler pulling air towards the processor at the same time as the PSU fan is drawing air out of the case -- which limits the cooling effectiveness of virtually every CPU cooler around. (All of the SUGO cases, based on their design, suffer from this issue.)

When I had the SG01, I had both top fans as exhaust and the side fan as intake. It didn't keep things real cool, but nothing was too hot afterwards. But due to the SG01's poor cooling capabilities, I didn't try to overclock anything.