MaximumPC 2007 07

Listen, Raptor drives cost a ton of money, so we’d like to keep them as pristine as possible for as long as pos-

sible. Our fi rst plan of attack is to somehow get our hard drives to a reasonable average temperature. We’re not

looking to freeze up any platters but reducing the heat by 10 degrees or so would be a worthy accomplishment.

Our obvious next targets are the small supernovas—otherwise known as the voltage regulators—nestled

above the Quad FX. We’re concerned that a lack of air on them for very long will lead to critical issues, the least

of which being a giant, roaring fi re in the Maximum PC Lab. These things need to get cooled, stat; 110-plus

degrees does not a happy computer make.

22 MAXIMUMPC july 2007

COOLINGCOOLINGCOOLINGCOOLING

Master’s
Guide to

2 THE UBER-ENTHUSIAST RIG

Our Quad FX machine is one hot mother... shut your mouth! Just talking about Quad FX!

TEST

CASE

110.

104.

96.

88.

80.

72.

64.

56.

48.

40.

32.

24.020.

̊C

SCALE

The

temperature

scales in

all photos

of this rig

have been

normalized

to match

the scale on

the right.

UNDER THE HOOD

CPU 3GHz Quad FX-

MEMORY 2GB DDR2 Corsair

Dominator RAM, 800MHz

VIDEOCARD Two Nvidia GeForce

7900 GTX in SLI

HARD DRIVE Two Western Digital

150GB Raptors

COOLING Two AMD stock CPU

coolers

CASE Thermaltake Armor

IF IT AIN’T BROKE...

See this part of the case? Near our two

nestled optical drives? Yeah, it’s plenty

cool. There’s no need to buy a crazy

bay fan or start drilling holes all over

the place. Your case doesn’t need to

become an F3 vortex to achieve cooling

nirvana. The Quad FX already sounds

like a jet engine; there’s no need to turn

it into a rocket launcher.

KEEP YOUR ARMS AND LEGS AWAY FROM

THE VOLTAGE REGULATORS

As it’s running a pair of dual-core procs in

tandem, our Quad FX platform requires two volt-

age regulators. And without any kind of cooling

support, these puppies get hot. How hot? 100 C

is a conservative average, although certain areas

of the regulators got hotter than 110 C—the top

range of our thermal imager. It’s a small wonder

nobody was killed testing this rig.

SPLIT THE TWINS

Yes, we’re looking at the hard drives again.

It’s bad enough there’s no air to flow across

their spicy exteriors. But in this case, there’s

an additional issue: The Raptors are nestled

together like two bugs in a rug. Two very

warm bugs in a heated, bearskin rug. With

temperatures pushing 65 C, these 10,000rpm

Raptors surely won’t last as long as they

could were they a wee bit chillier.

RAM A-OK

The RAM in our Quad FX machine

reached an average of 53 C or so.

That’s pretty warm, and it’s due to

a lack of additional cooling around

the motherboard area. We’d prefer

that area to be just a little cooler,

but the temps aren’t cause for

alarm. We want to run just a little air

across the modules—believe it or

not, one of those aftermarket RAM

coolers will do the trick.