WaveMaster Sucks - Need Help

N

neubspeed

Gawd
Joined
Feb 19, 2005
Messages
518
Hi all, I bought my Coolermaster WaveMaster a couple months ago and although it looks awesome, it's just brutal for cooling. I have a lot of really hot components inside like an FX-55/X850XT/ 2 raptors and stuff like that so I really want to get those ambient temperatures down. Right now in the summer my ambient's are like 38 degrees and around 45 after playing a couple hours of CS Source. Are there any pre-done mods or things I can do to improve the overall airflow of the case? I'm not a good welder or anything but I don't mind spending a little money to get a good job done. Can you buy any panels for the wavemaster with side fans or anything? Ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
By ambient do you mean case air temp or room temp? If case air temp, how are you measuring it? I can see those being NB or CPU temps, but not room temp! If those are CPU temps, then don't worry, thats OK for air cooling.

As far as I know, there are no factory panels for that case, but I may be wrong.

But If you are accurate about those being case air temps, and your room temp is much lower, then you might be able to do several things to help your situation. Looking at that case, your main intakes are lodged in the HD rack. Those raptors might be pre heating your case air for you or blocking what little airflow you have. A heat sink can only do a certain amount of cooling, but it's the same percentage as long as fan speed does not change. If it does 45 when the ambient is 25, then it will do 55 when ambient is 35. Try moving both the raptors to the bottom, one at bottom and one at top, or a HD cooler / 5.25 to 3.5 converter in the 5.25 bays. You don't have to go expensive. Play around with these for a while. The idea is to get more cold air to the CPU. If that does not work, then get a Dremmel. I see metal that needs cut!

List me the following and I'll tell ya what I think.

CPU temp
Motherboard ( northbridge ) temp
case temp
room temp
 
Thanks for the reply, right now I have both raptors at the bottom of the case. I'll move one to the top tonight. My CPU temperature is 42 idle / 55 full load (according to NV Monitor), my video card temperature is 43 idle / 59 full load (according to CCC), the temperature inside the case (Aux according to Everest, and System according to NV Monitor) is 33 idle / 37 load in the winter / 45 load in the summer after games), and finally the temperature in my room right now is about 26 right now but can go up to like 33 (we're moving next month so my dad disconnected the air conditioner because he's an idiot lol). I'm not sure how to check the chipset temperature.
 
While that is a little on the high end of things. I think them temps look like more then the safe area. But they can easy be improved on.

1. Get some harddrive fan blowers and put both harddrives at the top of the case. Heat rises.

http://www.svc.com/fhd-3410b3e-42.html
or
http://www.svc.com/vanhddcool.html

I own both and can say they don't do much. But they will help. Here is why!

First them raps get VERY hot thus increasing the temp of your air coming into the case. By moving the drives up top you put the heat somewhere it will not matter. And them drives are designed to take the heat. The fan blowers I showed you will bring some air over them and bring more air into your case. Your CPU exhost fans will remove the hot air just fine. Now you have cooler air blowing over both your video card and your CPU. I would expect to see at lest a 4 C drop in temp doing this.

I would also suggest removing the heat sink on you 850 and replacing the thermal compound on it with articsilver. And perhaps get a sanding / lapping kit and sand down the serface of the heat sink on it. I did that to a friends x800 and it droped in temp.

Other then making sure you have high CFM fans in the case this is all you can do without cutting the case.

I hope this helps please keep us up to date as to how things turn out.
 
neubspeed said:
Thanks for the reply, right now I have both raptors at the bottom of the case. I'll move one to the top tonight. My CPU temperature is 42 idle / 55 full load (according to NV Monitor), my video card temperature is 43 idle / 59 full load (according to CCC), the temperature inside the case (Aux according to Everest, and System according to NV Monitor) is 33 idle / 37 load in the winter / 45 load in the summer after games), and finally the temperature in my room right now is about 26 right now but can go up to like 33 (we're moving next month so my dad disconnected the air conditioner because he's an idiot lol). I'm not sure how to check the chipset temperature.
Click to expand...

somethings wrong here... i CANNOT see how the CPU is that cool with all that hot air... :S

try speedfan and post a screenie :D
 
(arrow down) Temp1: -48
(check mark) Temp2: 44
(arrow down) Temp3: 37
(arrow down) HD0: 33
(arrow down) HD1: 33

Not sure what those mean. But here they are.
 
you my friend, are a victim of the temperature bug, as am i :(

mine are about the same temps lol but i know they are worng, just put your hand by the exhaut fan and youll know if there close or not
 
I have the WaveMaster too, and after a few days of running it when I first got it, I noticed it was pretty hot compared to my previous case.
Here's what you do:
Put a fan in the top hole where the extra expansion ports are supposed to be, and get a PCI slot cooler.
I put an 80mm fan in the top without the filter (isn't dusty here and the filter restricted a lot of airflow) and then I found 2 small pieces of aluminum in my basement and made this bracket to put the expansion ports in the 5.25" drive bays:
Picture001.jpg

All you have to do is bend the sheets to a 90 degree angle and drill 4 holes in each, two to hold the ports in place and two to screw into the drive bays. If you have more than 2 optical drives then that won't work for you however.

Then grab one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835150006

They're cheap and they move a lot of air. Throw it in under your video card to get rid of it's hot air. I also cut the grate off the back, releasing even more airflow. Then make sure you have the two fans in the front installed and blowing on the raptors. My 2 36gig-ers stay cool to the touch and my case registers at no more then 29C under load in Abit's EQ program.

My 2 cents.

[edit for grammar]
 
also......dont put your raptors at the bottom, putting them that close to the intake fan is very very bad

youll just be blowing hot air over mobo/video card which is worse........put them above the intake fan if possbile..........

take pics of inside of your comp, maybe you need to do wireing managment, and such......

plus, coolmaster fans in the wavemaster sucj......get aftermarket fans.

first post pics tho, let us see the inside of the comp, the guts and such


soulsaver_8229
 
I have my raptors at the bottom with the intake fans blowing over them, and my case still stays nice and cool. I think the trick is using that PCI slot cooler, because its a straight shot for air from the front of the case out the back.

BTW, the fan I put in the top hole is blowing in, the two fans in the front are blowing in, and the 80mm in the back by the CPU us blowing out, along with the PSU fan.
 
I've already got rid of the inputs at the top, their useless to me lol. I'll look into getting a PCI card with a fan but not sure how well it'll work.

 
my temps never get over 35C in my wavemaster, even during doom3. maybe it's all those cables and the raptors. that's my guess. i dunno. i just built the thing and didn't know anything about comp. parts until about a month ago. :)
 
neubspeed said:
I've already got rid of the inputs at the top, their useless to me lol. I'll look into getting a PCI card with a fan but not sure how well it'll work.
Click to expand...
Looks like your cable management is okay. You said you got an FX-55??? That thing is hot, damn hot. Pair it with the x850 and you got a great way to fry eggs :)
But if you're not into cooking with your PC, then my suggestion is to get the case as empty as possible, and possibly shoehorn a pair of 120mm fans if you can. Some adapters can do the trick if you don't want to cut the case up. Even if the adapters won't fit, they will be much easier to trim than the case itself. The hard drives can be mounted to the case floor (with velcro if you don't want to drill) and the rack for 3.5" drives can be removed if you are really determined. Good luck!.
 
ugh uses 80mm fans. cut out the stock fan grills. Also, it has almost no intake. take off the side panel and tell us how much temps drop. zeus, fx 55s arent thAT hot... coolermaster wavemaster stock cooling sucks, that is what is at fault.
 
if you want to spend like a 100 bucks, frozencpu.com can do a custom job for you on a CM door and they will stick a fan into it and make a acrylic window as well. my temps stay pretty low bout 35 idle and 40 MAX. i took the top expansion ports out since they are useless to me and i have a usb hub and my monitor has USBs too. iam thinking of moving the raptor to the top of the case my self. id clean up all that wire clutter you have. maybe switch the CPU cooler as well? alot of people say that the two front fans dont get anything done at all, since of the front mesh grill. i was actually thinking of takeing em out completely and flipping my hard drives so i wouldnt see the SATA cable and such. ill post a pic later. if you need help on figureing out how to take the screws out of the case, i can help there too.
 
I tried removing the door and the temps went WAY down, also someone told me getting a Thermalright XP120 will add a lot of airflow to the case and may help. I'm really thinking about picking up a Geforce 7800 GTX and an A8N-SLI Premium motherboard but I don't think this case can handle it.
 
neubspeed said:
I tried removing the door and the temps went WAY down, also someone told me getting a Thermalright XP120 will add a lot of airflow to the case and may help. I'm really thinking about picking up a Geforce 7800 GTX and an A8N-SLI Premium motherboard but I don't think this case can handle it.
Click to expand...

a xp120 wont add airflow to the case... the case is lacking, not your heatsink :p
 
The problem with the wave is not just cooling. My 74g raptor sounded like a rock crunching machine mounted in the lower cage. Also, the vibrations were driving me nuts. The rap now lives in the bottom 5.25" bay, using the Nexxus disktwin adapter/cooler. It never goes over 38'C full load, with a room temp of 27'C. I use the XP120 on my winchester, and have an X800Xl. The cpu never goes over 45'C full load, even if I hit 30'C in my room. I cant make the cpu hot, its like watercooling. I highly recommend it, if it will fit. My X800XL was hitting 75'C in games. The ATI silencer5 brought it down to 53'C full load. I recommend cooling these 2 components, and moving your hdd up(although more for sound/vibrations than temps imo). Also, I have seen where you remove the lower front panel and drill out the punched holes bigger behind the decoration pillar. And lastly, the biggest flaw of the wave, you have to seal up/tape off the rectangular holes in both sides of the front fan mounting plate. Unless blocked, the front fans just recirculate the hot case air badly. This helped me a lot. Take off your side panels and look at how the fan brackets have these large rectangular shaped holes in them. Tape the mothers!
 
You did remove the top USB/Firewire/mic/audio ports and put a fan in right? If you didn't that could help.
 
I still stick to my guns on moving your raptors.........just like watercooling, why have coolent go straight to the cpu/gpu? youll just have hot/warm collent going over everything else............ your blowing hot air from very hot dual raptors, over all other compnets, that would normaly not be hot, but warm, now you make them hot, move your raptors, then do temp readings, im sure you will drop 2-5 degs if not more.......i dont know if anyone here agrees with me, but its a simple logic~


soulsaver_8229
 
Tidy your wires :S there awful and i can seethem restrcting airflow a bit.
 
I use the screen on the top of the case instead of the USB connection, but on the bottom of the case, I put a few 60mm holes for air intake, helped a bunch
 
Get an XP120 or get a 92mm fan for your XP90c, if that's that's on your processor right now. Also, an ATI silencer Rev. 5 v2 wouldn't hurt, they do a great job at keeping quiet and cooling efficiently. Also, I'd wait on getting a 7800, at least until there are some R520 benches/previews :D. Either that, or the price drops below 500.
 
I'm not experiencing any thermal problems with individual components in my Wavemaster, and it's pretty full of fairly high-end goodies. My problem arises when i button up the case. There is just not sufficient air intake capacity once the side panel is in place.

Drilling out the 100+ undersized intake holes helped it somewhat. You can't see the holes once the cover is back on. The Athlon64 sticker is there to hide a small gouge in the case (I got $25 off on the case due to it).

image026_large.jpg


image028_large.jpg


I still run it without the side cover as there is not adequate air intake to avoid heat build-up now that I have two 74GB Raptors (RAID 0), two 160GB Cavier SE's (RAID 0), and the two 6800 Ultra's SLI'ed. I intend to punch some holes over the graphics cards and stick in a couple 80mm intake fans soon. Am also considering a pair of Arctic NV Silencer 5's, although they apparently cool the GPU no better than the stock fan/heatsink, the fact that they vent the heat out the back of the case seems a big plus.
image001_large.jpg


I didn't want the 2.2 pound hunk of copper that CoolerMaster calls the "Cyber 6" flexing my Gigabyte mobo, so I added some supports to the motherboard tray...
image002_large.jpg


The optional top exhaust fan is almost worthless with the restrictive grill on it, something needs to be improved there, I just havent figured out what yet... I moved the connectors to a blank 5.25 bay in the meantime...
image022_large.jpg


Followup:
I eventually made this bracket to correct the problem with the top fan, and parked a couple fans in the side panel, and it's all running cool and stable.
image003_large.jpg


image009_large.jpg




The remaining guts in the thing are a Winchester 3500, a Plextor dual-layer DVD burner (above a Lite-On CD-RW/DVD combo), 2 gig of Corsair XMS (2-2-2-5) dual-channel memory, an Augigy 2 ZS, and an Enermax Noisetaker 600W SLI power supply.

PS - By the way, my two RAIDed 74GB Raptors run no hotter than my two 7200RPM SATA's do.
 
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