# The age of high tech cooling



## cainmosozihcs (Nov 28, 2004)

Now that AMD and Intel are producing faster and faster cpu's we need better and better cooling. Sometimes fans don't cut it or they become too loud or for some reason we go to water cooling. To me this makes sense even though i don't personally have water cooling. I was hoping that people could post there thoughts about water cooling vs. fan cooling vs. thermoelectric cooling.....Whats the best for the price?


----------



## 95five-0 (Dec 7, 2004)

Here is all the information you could evr want on water cooling

http://overclockers.com/topiclist/index31.asp#WATER COOLING


----------



## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

Hi,

I don't know too much about the water cooling situation, because we have never in our shop received any requests for that and personally, I think the excessive heat many times is just improperly installed items or a lack of knowledge about proper air flow in a case. 

We use all (95% of the time) standard factory CPU and heatsink solutions, and do not have heating problems. There are times we have a request for a specific cooling solution and use that, but many times it is a little overkill.

That being said, the reason I am writing this is to tell you about something that really looks and works good right now. The new Antec II case with a 450 watt power supply is kind of unique in the way that it handles the air and it is a beauty besides. 

There is a baffle that goes over the heatsink (there is room for fans in the baffle, but not needed in most cases) that pulls cool air from outside of the case and directly over the CPU. I know there are some other cases that have had something similar, but I think this one is unique in that it is passive (without the fan in the baffle) cooling that permits the Heatsink Fan to pull cool air directly out of the back of the case and that it does. If you put a piece of paper back there where the case has the opening for the baffle, it will pull that paper directly to the opening with quite a bit of pressure. The hot air after it goes down over the heatsink is pulled out of the upper part of the case by the rear fan. 

My newest build (for personal use, not my shop) is an Antec Sonata II with an ASUS A8N-sli with a 3700 San Diego by AMD. What a unit this makes. Even with several hard drives, a burner, a Iomega drive, the PCI - e video card and this unit, it runs very cool even with the auxiliary front fan turned off. I am running the back fan at the lowest speed (for noise control), use the stock heatsink and fan and the at-rest temps are approximately 34C and even under stress, it never gets over 44C. To top it off, the power supply has two cooling fans (very quiet) and the front one works all the time and the rear one only when needed. To this date (had it about three weeks now), the rear fan has never had to come on because the heat got to the point that it was needed. 

Can't beat that with any fancy cooling, so I am very pleased. I just thought I would pass that information on to you in case you want to explore that option and talk to some others who are using this unit.


----------



## Volt-Schwibe (Jan 12, 2003)

i tell you, my coolermaster case came with a shroud like that....

i turned the fan _*off*_, and my temps went _*down.*_

i would figure it would help, but this isn't always the situation.

i just figured i should mention how the shroud on mine adds 10 degrees to my pc.


----------



## Tumbleweed36 (May 14, 2005)

Hi,

I could not agree more than with what Walt is saying. That is exactly what happens with some of those baffles, but I have not seen it with this one. The CPU air pull by the heatsink fan through their baffle is tremendous and it is outside cool air. I just think they have a much better design that allows the air flow not to restict the case flow and if fact feel that the baffle placement actually makes the air pulled in from the front go right over the heatsink and CPU. They just have done a great job with this and the case will run cool without it also, so you have the best of both worlds. Walt hit it on the head with his comments.


----------

