Undistinguished Gray Suit
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Posted - 2011.08.24 22:15:00 -
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Now that I can finally post...
I think some more details on the cases people are using would be helpful.
There are plenty of cases out there with lots of fans that still have a lousy cooling design out there, along with lots of OEM machines that aren't designed to handle much more than what comes in the box. Stuff a high powered GPU in either of these and you're asking for trouble.
I haven't had any trouble with EVE at all. Here's my setup:
Pedestal Case (Chenbro SR107 I think), 2 92mm intake fans, 2 120x25mm center fans, 1 120x38mm (I think 38 is right - it's the thicker common version) exhaust. All steel, weighs about 50 lbs. Cooling is ok but could be better. The main problem is my front vents tend to plug up. Still, it's a server case and it's designed for performance and not looks.
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 PSU (80mm exhaust that hardly does anything except keep the PSU from melting)
2 Opteron 285 processors with some relatively inexpensive Thermaltake 80mm heatsinks on a Supermicro H8DC8
EVGA GTX260 (216 sp version)
Rather than mess with EVE, I loaded my rig up with a proper stress test:
Prime95 running 4 threads with priority set to below normal and
Furmark running in "X-treme" burn-in mode. Furmark is designed to torch GPUs.
Setting prime95 to below normal priority lets Furmark have all the CPU time it needs to torch the GPU while keeping the CPU at full load.
Fan controller set to my usual settings (so not loud)
Cleaned last weekend.
After running that for 10 minutes my CPUs were more or less stable at 60C and 62C, and the vid card was at 86 with 71% fan speed. That's with the vid card and all four CPU cores running at full load.
I'm not sure there is a problem with EVE. As far as I'm concerned a computer should be able to run at full load indefinitely, or at least until it needs a good cleaning. It might help if some of the people with problems would try the stress test I ran. A word of warning though: Furmark has ruined a fair number of graphics cards. My view is that those cards were defective, but that won't protect you.
Finally, a tip on desktop computer cleaning:
Use canned air. A vacuum works great for general dust bunny removal, but you'll never get much out of a graphics card that way and many CPU heatsinks aren't much better. Typical fan on top CPU sinks can be cleaned by taking the fan off and hitting them with a brush and vacuum, but canned air is a lot easier. It also works well on fans.
Pay attention to the temperature of the can. Canned air cans get cold when used, and the pressure starts dropping if they get too cold. If you notice a pressure drop stop and let the can warm up. If you're in a hurry feel free to cuddle up to the can.
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