any cooling tips?

[breadandbubbles]

ive got a small, crappy little acer desktop. its microatx. actually, its the Aspire 5100, if that helps at all.

ive got AMD's Phenom 9500 in there, along with 4gb of ram, Saphires ATI HD4830 512mb, a hard drive and 2 dic drives. its all powered by a fairly cheap cooler master 500 watt PSU, and Vista home premium.

theres a small fan at the back, id imagine, 8cm. and another one at the front (which i cant see cause of all the fancy decorational stuff, but id imagine its also 8cm). then of course theres the stock PSU and CPU fans. the removable panel has a few venting holes in it.

NOW, why i need help.

I just ut that new card in. Saphire did a good job, i think, of cooling her down. big fan, nice and quiet.

id like to do a little, mild overclocking. i dont know much about it, but my understanding is juicing it up a tiny bit isnt so hard. i'd like to get a little more out of my HD4830, in any case.

thing is, my case gets HOT. i mean it not a problem right now, but if i left her on all night last night, having jsut installed my new graphics card, and this morning the fans were going NUTS. very loud.

im totally at a loss as to what to do. ineed to keep it cool. i really, really dont have a lot of money right now, but this cant continue.

a friend actually recommended cutting a hole at the top, and putting a fan in, cause heat rises. whaddya think? thats harder to do than it sounds, but would it even be worth it?

Edited April 24, 2009 by breadandbubbles

[puntoMX]

id like to do a little, mild overclocking. i dont know much about it, but my understanding is juicing it up a tiny bit isnt so hard. i'd like to get a little more out of my HD4830, in any case.

ATI Control Centre can do that automatically for you, just check the CCC and enable overclocking.

For the case, if you ask me you would do better by buying another case from Antec for example. A case is personal I must say although cooling is the most important part as you already have noticed. If possible, pick a case that can hold a few 12cm fans.

[jcarle]

The Antec P18x series (P180, P182, P183) offer the best thermally efficient airflow on the market at the moment in my opinion.

Edited April 26, 2009 by jcarle

[DigeratiPrime]

The Acer Aspire 5100 is a notebook not a desktop...

So what case do you really have?

I also think a better case would solve this type of problem - 12cm fans are great.

Is Cool'n'Quiet enabled?

[puntoMX]

The Acer Aspire 5100 is a notebook not a desktop...

It's the Aspire M5100 Desktop .

[DigeratiPrime]

Thanks, you're the Acer expert

I see it does have vents on the side panel.

[CoffeeFiend]

Fans or not, the last similar Acer I've seen was packed so ridiculously tight, that there was virtually no airflow. You'd put ten fans on it, and air still wouldn't move around.

The Antec 300 is cheap and good. The P18x series is a bit nicer indeed, but more expensive.

[breadandbubbles]

i was honestly jsut going to cut some holes in the side, and add some fans, but im looking at around 40 - 50 dollars for some big quiet fans and the pieces. youd recommend a better case?

its fairly tight in there but i keep it organized. i'll look into these cases though.