# Cooling: Quick question



## wkw427 (Nov 9, 2008)

I am right in stating that air cooling is directly related to the ambient air temperature, right? So if it is 70-80F in the room where the PC is, cooling isn't going to be very good...

Right, or am I wrong?

Secondly, when I play some games, my gpu heats up to around 67-70c. I've never seen it go above 72c, even when running furmark and prime95 for a half hour. After that, I cool down to idle temps (40C cpu and 40-50C gpu) in a minute or so.
However, even when I tweak my GPU's fan speed, it still reaches its highest temp in the same amount of time. 
Why doesn't it seem to make much of a difference if I have the fans spinning fairly slow and quiet, or if I have them wizzing about like a small vacuum cleaner? Still peaks at the same temp in the same amount of time, and cools down to idle at the same amount of time


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

Cooling is linked to ambient temps, however depending on how good your cooling fans are you should be able to get decent temps.

for case fans and cpu coolers high cfm fans are good. When it comes to your gpu 72 degrees c is nothing to worry about.

Over that last few days my room temp where my pc is where around 30 degrees c I use an antec 1200 with tri-cool fans and I have a tuniq tower 120 cpu cooler. I usually idle at 37 degrees c and at full load 52 degrees c. The last few days I was idle at 38 and full load temps were 58 but I didn't turn my fans up.

My gpu gtx260 idles at 42 degrees c and at full whack gets near 70 but hardley ever does it get that much.


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## wkw427 (Nov 9, 2008)

Yeah, it goes up to 70c when I play games. I've been seeing the idle temps go steadily up the past few days as it has gotten warmer this weekend.

But I'm right in saying that up to a point, no matter how much airflow is going, the machine won't cool down very much in relation to the air I'm using to cool it with


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

yes you are correct, this is why a lot of cases have lots of fans with high cfm so high ambient temps don't affect things too much.


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## wkw427 (Nov 9, 2008)

What is cfm?


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

CFM = Cubic Feet per Minute.

Ambient temps make a difference but the CPU fan will be adjusted accordingly.
Under normal conditions, the CPU will stay about the same temp regardless of ambient temps.
i.e. my room, at this moment, is about 80F (27C) and my CPU temp is 42C with a OEM HSF turning at 1400 RPM. 
My GPU is at 46C w/ fan speed at 13%.
Those temp will be about the same when the room is 65C but the fans will be turning at a lower RPM's.


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