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The other day, I fettled my Windoze 98 box such that I could play Starcraft on it again. That was good. Today, Starcraft abruptly exited a couple of times. looking at the BIOS health check screens showed that the CPU was at the warning temperature (80C), and that the "system fan" was reporting 0 rpm. The "System temp", however, was at a more sensible 32C.
I opened the case; the side was warm to the touch. The inside was hot - the 3 hdds were slightly painful to touch, and the PSU felt warm. All the fans (one on PSU, one on CPU, one bottom-front of case) were working, except the fan on the mboard (Northbridge, I think), which I've replaced once before, and was stopped. I can probably go to a Maplins and get another fan, and botch the connector again, but that doesn't seem likely to do much about the other bits getting hot.
Beyond vacuuming the dust out of the CPU heatsink, what can/should I do to keep this machine running cooler? I've got the side off it at the moment, and the CPU seems to be running at 63C or so (it's just sat in BIOS, though not doing anything much). It's just a Starcraft machine, and fairly elderly, so I don't want to spend lots of money, but I would like it working again!
I opened the case; the side was warm to the touch. The inside was hot - the 3 hdds were slightly painful to touch, and the PSU felt warm. All the fans (one on PSU, one on CPU, one bottom-front of case) were working, except the fan on the mboard (Northbridge, I think), which I've replaced once before, and was stopped. I can probably go to a Maplins and get another fan, and botch the connector again, but that doesn't seem likely to do much about the other bits getting hot.
Beyond vacuuming the dust out of the CPU heatsink, what can/should I do to keep this machine running cooler? I've got the side off it at the moment, and the CPU seems to be running at 63C or so (it's just sat in BIOS, though not doing anything much). It's just a Starcraft machine, and fairly elderly, so I don't want to spend lots of money, but I would like it working again!
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The fans can shift air about fine in the case but it's good to set up an air flow so that the heat actually gets moved out of the case with speed. This should help quite a bit.
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the solution was to put two fans on the case as above - one pushing in (permanent full throttle), and one thermo-throttled one opposite pulling air out. the unusual bit was that these are both 120mm fans, and they're mounted on the sides of the case right over the drive bays. as they're 120mm fans, they shift a lot of air with very little noise, so i would suggest you work out where the hot spot of your case is, and put a 120mm fan in front of it, and replace the current exhaust fan with another 120mm .. case mangling would be necessary though.
i think my fans are around 30db which is quite quiet, and they move a large volume of air compared to 80mm fans which're louder.
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I often find fluff in the cpu heatsink, and have to unbolt the fan to vacuum it out. That has usually fixed the problem - do you know how much it has reduced the temp on your cpu?
A complete new cooler for the cpu might not be totally unwarranted. If the present one is not good enough, it is surely possible to get a better one. You could bring it here sometime if you wish - I have some spare fans that might help, along with heatsink compound, an IR thermometer, non-reversible thermal strips, and so on.
You can get coolers for the hard disc, which might help slightly. Otherwise, a transparent cover on the machine and a bit of smoke at the intake fan might show you if the airflow needs to be improved anywhere. If one fan is really not running, that might explain a lot of the problem. If all fans are trying to draw air out of the case, that could be a problem as well.
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