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| Home >> Resources | Support >> How to Upgrade Computers >> Improve the cooling of your un-overclocked Thunderbird >> |
I. Introduction and SpecsImprove the cooling of your un-overclocked Thunderbird by Philip BayerYou are encouraged to make links to this article from your website and tell your friends Brief Introduction: I recently built a new system for personal use. While I had been well aware of the heat problems associated with the new high-speed AMD and Intel CPUs, I never could have anticipated the severe heat problems that I would run into with my brand new out-of-the-box Thunderbird. I have done much research on the subject of CPU cooling since first building my new machine, and I decided to post what I discovered on the web.
So you can probably see by the hardware specs that this machine requires some pretty heavy cooling in order to maintain an acceptable level of stability I had to do alot of research to come up with a solution, and I decided to put all of the data that I collected in one place to make it easier for the next guy. Problem background: It took me just under an hour to build the entire machine. The original case was one that I had previously been using for a P-III 600 machine. It had a single front intake fan, and a 250 Watt power supply with 80mm exhaust fan. The case had worked fine with the old setup, and, in fact, that box with the TYAN S1854 Trinity 400 Motherboard was the most stable machine I've ever built. So, there was my first mistake. The heat generated by a P-III 600 MHz doesn't even come close to that of an Athlon 1.33 GHz. The board, chip and memory are all meant to run at a 133x2 MHz DDR bus. But I couldn't even install Windows 98 unless I lowered the FSB to 100 MHz AND took off the side panels of the chassis. At 133 MHz, the BIOS showed the temperature of the CPU to be approaching 58°C with one panel on. So I lowered the bus, opened the chassis and continued installing Windows 98. Once Windows was installed, I immediately began testing the stability of the board at different clock-rates, and I found that I could run the FSB at a maximum of 124 MHz (248/2), and even then, only with the chassis wide-open. Though, I never tested this speed with (e.g.) Quake III, I am sure it would have frozen before the first map finished loading. This of course is by no means sufficient. First of all, I hate fan noise. I want my computer to be as quiet as possible (and VERY quiet IS possible as you shall see), so I must close the case. Secondly, I spent quite a large chunk of cash on my 266 MHz FSB total solution, and damn it, I wasn't settling for anything less than my money's worth. I took the following steps to lower my CPU temperature.  NEXT: | II. Solution 1: Thermal interface change | III. Solution 2: Ensure proper airflow
| IV. Solution 3: Software cooling
| V. Solution 4: Increase Airflow
| VI. Solution 5: Case mods for better cooling |
VII. Conclusion and updates |
VIII. Heatsink Install Tips, and Fan Fan Throughput |  BACK: | Preface and Notes |OTHERS: | Go to Top | Directron Home | Other System Manuals | |
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