How To: Look after your PC thread

How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby ket on 24 Jul 2009 18:21

Title says it all guys. All too often do I see crimes against PCs in my daily work so bit by bit (translated: when I can be arsed :p) I'll add more to this thread on basic tips for looking after your PC. :)

Lets get started with a few simple and quick to do things.

Q. My PCs temps are really high (70c+) what can I do?
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A. Theres a lot of things you can do to keep your PC cool. The first is the most obvious; ensure your case has good airflow. A typical healthy PC will have 1 120mm fan at the front of the case sucking fresh air in while there will be 1 120mm fan at the back of the case to exhaust hot air. Be sure the fans actually have some muscle to them if you want a effective job done. 120mm fans with a CFM of or above 50 are ideal. If your willing to tweak your fans by taking advantage of BIOS settings for fanspeed, then the more CFM a 120mm fan can shift the better.

Q. I've done that, my system is still hot. What can I do now?
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A. More specifically to the above, if your system is still overheating (GPU, CPU, NB, SB) check to make sure dust is not clogging your heatsinks and fans. If you have done that it may be time to add a small 40mm fan to your NB and SB if they are getting hot. However, the most effective way to ensure temperatures never get out of control is to remove any heatsinks covering the NB and SB on your motherbard, as well as any heatsinks that may be used to cover various ICs on the board. Once you have done this clean any thermal paste / pads / gum off of the heatsinks and components and apply some good thermal material in its place. For anything that uses pushpins I recommend Arctic Silver Ceramique. For anything thats just held on with thermal tape, Shinetsu is very good.

Q. My GPU is very hot, what can I do?
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A. Typically, manufacturers set very low fanspeeds, which result in much higher temps that will, of course, over time lead to less lifespan of your components. To remedy this problem remove the HSF from your graphics card, clean any thermal material used and replace with Arctic Silver Ceramique and re-mount the HSF. Note that if the memory for your graphics card is covered by the HSF and uses thermal pads, be sure to remember to place them back over the memory before re-mounting the cooler! With that done, the next step is to increase the fanspeed. On ATi cards you can easily do this via Catalyst Control Centre. Even with stock coolers, you should be able to run 60-80% fanspeed without any significant noise increase. For nVidia cards or if you want one generic application that can OC your card and control fanspeed for ATi and nVidia cards Rivatuner is very good.

Thats it for now. Hopefully that helps some of you look after your puter more effectively.
Last edited by ket on 25 Jul 2009 11:53, edited 2 times in total.
Mobo: MSI X570 Tomahawk
CPU: R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz 1.3v
RAM: 2x16GB Klevv BoltX 3600MHz 16-20-20-35
GPU: Powercolor 6800XT Red Devil
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E, Realtek ALC1200
HDD: 250GB & 500GB nVME 3.0 M.2 drives, 2TB Seagate Barracuda, Sata3 64MB Cache, 250GB Hynix SL301
Opticals: DVD-RW, Blu-Ray
PSU: eVGA 1000w G2 Supernova
Case: NZXT Phantom 530

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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby audioave10 on 25 Jul 2009 05:42

Nice...I would add that Rivatuner is excellent for increasing GPU fan
speeds to keep the video card cooler. You can set it once and forget it.
Get it at Guru3d.com...free.
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby ket on 25 Jul 2009 11:47

Ahh yes I forgot about Rivatuner, that app works for both ATi and nVidia cards folks.
Mobo: MSI X570 Tomahawk
CPU: R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz 1.3v
RAM: 2x16GB Klevv BoltX 3600MHz 16-20-20-35
GPU: Powercolor 6800XT Red Devil
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E, Realtek ALC1200
HDD: 250GB & 500GB nVME 3.0 M.2 drives, 2TB Seagate Barracuda, Sata3 64MB Cache, 250GB Hynix SL301
Opticals: DVD-RW, Blu-Ray
PSU: eVGA 1000w G2 Supernova
Case: NZXT Phantom 530

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ket
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby VINTAR on 25 Jul 2009 16:33

Well my gpu fan plugs into my mobo so i increased it through bios. Also did rivatuner just Incase :-)
Core2Quad Q8300 2.5 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 CPU cooler
Gigabyte EP45 UD3R mobo
Nvidia GTS450
2 GIGS Transcend DDR2 800 pc6400 @ 960
Thermaltake Tough Power 650w PSU
Samsung Syncmaster P2350
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby ket on 25 Jul 2009 19:21

What card and cooler do u have?
Mobo: MSI X570 Tomahawk
CPU: R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz 1.3v
RAM: 2x16GB Klevv BoltX 3600MHz 16-20-20-35
GPU: Powercolor 6800XT Red Devil
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E, Realtek ALC1200
HDD: 250GB & 500GB nVME 3.0 M.2 drives, 2TB Seagate Barracuda, Sata3 64MB Cache, 250GB Hynix SL301
Opticals: DVD-RW, Blu-Ray
PSU: eVGA 1000w G2 Supernova
Case: NZXT Phantom 530

STALKER: Singularity (SIN) homepage
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ket
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Posts: 1262
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Location: The solar system

Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby VINTAR on 27 Jul 2009 06:17

Cards in my sig. It has a standard cooler on it. I think there is a pic in the show us your toys thread.
Core2Quad Q8300 2.5 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 CPU cooler
Gigabyte EP45 UD3R mobo
Nvidia GTS450
2 GIGS Transcend DDR2 800 pc6400 @ 960
Thermaltake Tough Power 650w PSU
Samsung Syncmaster P2350
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby ket on 28 Jul 2009 13:40

Only pics I can find are ones with a massive dual slot cooler, I'd say theres some meat to it assuming the fan spins @ 60%+.
Mobo: MSI X570 Tomahawk
CPU: R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz 1.3v
RAM: 2x16GB Klevv BoltX 3600MHz 16-20-20-35
GPU: Powercolor 6800XT Red Devil
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E, Realtek ALC1200
HDD: 250GB & 500GB nVME 3.0 M.2 drives, 2TB Seagate Barracuda, Sata3 64MB Cache, 250GB Hynix SL301
Opticals: DVD-RW, Blu-Ray
PSU: eVGA 1000w G2 Supernova
Case: NZXT Phantom 530

STALKER: Singularity (SIN) homepage
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ket
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Posts: 1262
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby VINTAR on 28 Jul 2009 15:10

Yeah, sounds like the one. Huge ass fan with copper pipes looping out. I run it at 100% just in case :-) ran stalker last night at max settings 1980x1080 or whatever it is and the card was running just shy of 50 degrees, is that ok?
Core2Quad Q8300 2.5 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 CPU cooler
Gigabyte EP45 UD3R mobo
Nvidia GTS450
2 GIGS Transcend DDR2 800 pc6400 @ 960
Thermaltake Tough Power 650w PSU
Samsung Syncmaster P2350
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Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby ket on 29 Jul 2009 11:22

50c under load is very good. General rule of thumb is to try and make sure that a GPU/CPU/NB/SB dont get over 60c. If you can do that, your hardware will last a very long time indeed regardless of overclocking.
Mobo: MSI X570 Tomahawk
CPU: R7 3700X @ 4.4GHz 1.3v
RAM: 2x16GB Klevv BoltX 3600MHz 16-20-20-35
GPU: Powercolor 6800XT Red Devil
Sound: Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E, Realtek ALC1200
HDD: 250GB & 500GB nVME 3.0 M.2 drives, 2TB Seagate Barracuda, Sata3 64MB Cache, 250GB Hynix SL301
Opticals: DVD-RW, Blu-Ray
PSU: eVGA 1000w G2 Supernova
Case: NZXT Phantom 530

STALKER: Singularity (SIN) homepage
User avatar
ket
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Posts: 1262
Joined: 14 Sep 2008 11:57
Location: The solar system

Re: How To: Look after your PC thread

Postby VINTAR on 29 Jul 2009 11:38

Sweet, I have another question but I`ll post in the OC thread.
Core2Quad Q8300 2.5 @ 3.6ghz
Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 CPU cooler
Gigabyte EP45 UD3R mobo
Nvidia GTS450
2 GIGS Transcend DDR2 800 pc6400 @ 960
Thermaltake Tough Power 650w PSU
Samsung Syncmaster P2350
-----------------------------------
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VINTAR
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Posts: 441
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Location: Durban, South Africa


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