having some slight problems, partly due to the warm spell in my area.

things are just generally runnign too hot, most notably the mainbord, the temp on that is currentley reading 79 while the cpu temp is only 65C. Any chance re wireing the system fans to run directley off the P/S will help the MB run cooler? The amount of power they draw should be neglagable.

currentley im running:

abit KD7A main bord
1GB ddr 333 ram
amd athalon XP 2600
geforce 6800XT AGP (finally found one for 50 bucks)
1 DVD read only drive
1 CD/DVD read/write/rewrite drive
1 CDRW drive
1 200 GB maxtor 7200rpm ide drive
2 system fans, one intake in the front one output in the back right near the cpu
1 gigabit ethernet card (in addition to the ethernet in the bord)

Ive got both sides off the case, and the ambient air tempature is around 70F in the room.

I might try blowing out the heat sink on the chipset (it already has a fan) , couldent hurt.

there are a couple smaller chips on the bord i could probably use thermal cement to apply some heatsinks too as well, but id have to start running old cpu coolers through the bandsaw to do it.

I guess if it really comes down to it i can run the damn box in an old fishtank full of mineral oil, but thats a mess, and it costs about 5 bucks a gallon.

Just found the chipset fan had died, removed it and hot glued an old cpu fan on inplace of it (closest to the size of the old one that i could find)

DAMN thats a piss poor heatsink, literally a dozen little fins about 1/4" by 1/8" arrainged in a circle about 1 1/2" wide, ;when im feeling industrious ill try removing it or perhaps getting some thermal glue and a copper disk to be able ot mount a regular cpu cooler on it.

well the cheapest way to do this (i assume you can install heatsinks) go to any local business computer retail store and the will have loads of used heatsinks and fans usually if there nice you can get nice big ones with a good fan for 5 bucks buy the ones you need make sure you bring the old one you want to get rid of so you can compare and make sure you have the right size

nd make sure you get some thermal paste to put between the heatsink and the GPU/cpu

and if your comp still runs too hot move it to the basement or a cooler place in the house

yea... stock heatsinks suck. Get something aftermarket... even a cheap something, like a small zalman or thermalight cooler. That should keep your core temp down, and then be sure you get some good airflow through the case.. step up the fans or add more fans. Make sure the inside of the case is unobstructed - if you have flat IDE cables, bundle them to make them more aerodynamic.

also, a good dusting never hurt anything.

seems the little fan hot gluied to the shito FSB heatsink does the trick, now ive just got to fix my video porblems, cunjo please check my general thread, perhaps youve run into a similar problem.

Nope, no idea... but whistler's right about the PSU. I'm using a 680W, and I'd recommend at least a 400W for any high-end card....

ok thanks for looking, as for the fsb, im nervious about trying to remove a cemented on heatsink, but theres a 1 1/2inch flatcirculare area on the heatsink.

i work as a welder in a thermocouple shop, i'm also the company machinist, it's little trouble for me to cut a half inch thick piece of 1 1/2" copper roundbar and then use thermal cement to glue it to the current heatsink and then cement an old cpu cooler on to it.

i dont use glue to put onn the heatsinks just use thermal compound and yea get a 450W psu its always better to have a bit too much than a bit not enough 450W will run any system with an amd chip in it and will usually last you a long time and for video card cooling i heard putting a pci slot fan cooler under it will keep it very cool :) there like 10 bucks bran new if you find a deal

i remember someone telling me you can put a cup of water next to the comp and you can make tea, and it will actually cool down the comp too.

i heat cold pizza up on my moniter, throw it on a paper plate with another on top for a lid and on top of the 21"crt it goes, freebie, buddy of mine used to be an ibm engineer, they were going to trash it cause the color was all messed up. I kept tapeing little magnets to it till it looked right.

little magnets - I wouldn't have thought of trying that. Very cool.

interesting...

@Spidey & Cunjo: Looking only at wattage on a PSU to determine if it can power your videocard is generally a bad idea since your video needs the common +12V rail, which all current PSUs have, and they need a certain number of amps. If you want to find the amount of amps on the +12V rail with the knowledge of how many watts are going through the rail, it would be WATTS / VOLTS = AMPS.

Just a tidbit to know when looking for the right PSU.

yea the one i was using didnt have it labled as to what amerage it can supp;ly only that ti was a 200 watt power suply

i do know how ameprage and watttage work. but im my ast i just catn du it captan i gust dont have the POWAR.

a cheap 450W is like 40$ these days

A cheap 450W power supply is not always to be trusted. Not all power supplies are created equal, so pick one from a reliable manufacturer that is built for quality.

See this guide for reliable power supplies.

I bought the 620W Corsair ToughPower Modular PSU. It's nice, but expensive, and in your case (running a lower graphics card, not overclocking, fewer hard drives and peripherals) you probably won't need more than 450-500.

Surb, most people aren't going to be able to deduce the amperage of the +12V rail unless it's given to them; you'd need to use more than just Ohm's law.

Cunjo, all factory made PSUs that follow the standards have a nice little sticker on a side stating overall Wattage, how many watts are going through each cable, and most of the time the number of amps it supplies.

And Ohm's Law is needed if there is no given amps; given the amount of watts going through the cable divided by the voltage.

If you happen to find yourself without a handy source of information to your power supply, there is always buying a power supply that provides such information, or if you have a multimeter of some type to measure wattage and voltage from a cable then more power to you.

most of the ones I've seen only tell you how many rails, the rail voltages, maximum wattage per rail, and total wattage.

and that's all you need to calculate amps... wattage on one rail divided by the rail voltage gives you amps... okay i'm sounding like broken record player.

Except if you add up all your maximum rail wattages, you will get more than your maximum total wattage in many cases, hence your maximum total wattage matters, and needs to be considered in calculating actual wattage per rail. Get what I'm saying?

My corsair has triple 12V rails, one rated at 30A, two rated at 18A. However, the total rating for the power supply is only 620W, so the most you could put out is 17.2A on each rail before the total power draw is too high for the PSU to handle. You could put out 30A on the first rail, but then you could only put out 10A on the other two. Once you go over the total power draw, all bets are off for stable power on any rail.

If the manufacturer's PSU sticker shows a total wattage for the PSU and yet if you calulate the watts from the volts and amps per cable and they go over the total watts shown then they fooked up somewhere.

Nope, pretty much all of the (quality) ones I've seen do this.

If they didn't, they'd be asking for trouble; that provides an important safety margin for variations in configuration below the maximum power output.

Cheaper PSUs often don't, because they simply don't care....
If a cheap 2-rail PSU says that it will take 450W, and you're drawing 400W from it, but you're doing 70% of it on one rail, you'll destroy your PSU.
A good PSU, however, will have the rails rated for HIGHER than an equal percentage of the maximum total load, so you don't have to worry about putting 70% of the load on one rail and 30% on the other - it can take that. Hence, all the rails combined may be rated higher than the total across all of them.