PC Case on or off?

Oriel

'ello, was jsut wondering:

I'm usually arsing about with something or other within my PC, which means that a lot of the time, I have the side panel of my PC case lying off. Do you think that's doing any damage to the cooling of the PC? I mean, would that be allowing more heat out, or does the cooling work more like air conditioning, where you have to keep everything closed up, to cause more of a "suction" effect?
The only other thing I can think about would be the matter of dust getting in.

Standard fan cooling, btw.

Thanks,
Sinecure.

Caffine

id say it problly helps cooling, but then again im often wrong

joto

I've the side of my case off too. I'm sure it's bad from a dust point of view, but I see where your coming from.
It'd be like having a wind tunnel then taking the tunnel away - no suction.

feylya

I have the side panel off mine and I have a p4 2.4 running at 3 ghz at 37C idling. I'd say just leave it off.

secret_squirrel

I'd say it depends on the case and the amout of crap in there . If you have gone to some trouble to create a specific flow of air say case fan at bottom sucking in cool air and case fan at top blowing out warm air (like me) then it might matter. Otherwise in a decent size case - i doubt it makes much difference

Oriel

Theres a Gf4200Ti, Creative Audigy Platinum 2, but most importantly it's an AlthonXP :rolleyes:
Actually, I think my fan speed has droped since I took it off, so that appears to be a good thing.

Practical

My brother is a service engineer and works with electronical/machinery equipment in hospitals, he claims that you actually cause more damage if you take the side panels off because blah blah blah <insert lecture here> I kind of lost interest when he was moaning at me for taking the panel off his PC :P

Mad Mike

Lid off is almost certainly better. It takes a substantial amount of thermal engineerng and some pretty powerful fans to design a system that runs cooler with the lid on than off. The average PC case just isn't tha good. In fact it is totally crap from a thermal point of view.

Here is a aimple tip for anyone interested in pulling a few degrees off the temperature of your CPU. Almost all modern CPUs have a fan sitting directly on top of a heatsink. The fans generally push supposedly cold air down through the fins of the heatsink and out the side. Problem is they almost never have any mechanism to prevent the hot air being pushed out the fins from being recirculated back through the fan and reheated.
A simple air inlet duct which pulls the inlet air from somewhere cooler works pretty good. I use a box shaped duct which I made out of cardboard and it lowers the CPU temerature by more than 3 degrees. My duct is only 100mm long - I never expermented with longer ducts. You need to keep the cross sectional area of the duct at least as wide as the fan so that it doesn't impede the airflow. A short duct won't prevent hot air from being recirculted and a long duct reduce the total airflow so there is probably an optimum length.

Cake Fiend

I doubt you're going to do serious enough damage to your machine that it would significantly shorten the life of it (in comparison to it being obsolesced by newer machines).

The obvious thing to do would be to take a few thermal readings with the case off, then close the case, allow a bit of time to break in, then take readings again. See when the CPU is coolest.

I wouldn't worry about it too much either way as long as the temps are of an acceptable level.

Gerry

The only reason you should take the side off is if the cpu is overheating because you don't have it cooled properly, and it should only be temporary.
Taking the case off creates big pockets of dead air, especially around things which are not actively cooled.
Also, any sort of directed airflow system stops working completely. Air from a fan at the front often gets deflected out the side of the case before it gets to the back.
This certainly happens with my case, as theres a 120mm in the front, and with the case off, the air comes out the side instead of cooling stuff down.

secret_squirrel

as well as the duct idea you can do the old overclockers trick of reversing the powersupply fan....making it blow air out of your case. Then you have a case fan at bottom of case sucking the air in. Thats why my case (as mentioned above) is cooler with the lid on.

Cake Fiend

Hrm, most power supplies I've installed do blow air out of the case.

vibe666

generally speaking there should be a fan blowing air into the case at one end and the psu and or another fan at the other end glowing air out, with the cpu fan sucking air through the heatsink too.

most of the time however due to either poorly designed cases and or cables everywhere there is usually poor airflow around the case anyway. you'll have to spend at least 80e on a case before you see much of a difference in temp, and only then if you have the fans etc. properly set up.

i remember about 2 years ago chris pirillo from lockergnome got severe abuse for suggesting that subscribers to his newletter remove some of the blanking plates on the back of their cases to 'let more air in'. geeks from all over the world severely berated him over the whole airflow thing and he had to make a big apology the next issue.

anyway, who am i to talk, i don't even have a case yet at all and my system is working fine. plenty of airflow round it.

the motherboard (P4 1.5gig, w/256meg) is sitting on a large paperback copy of the naked shef's cookbook with the psu and external modem sitting on the left of it, and the CD Writer, WiFi AP and 2 hard drives on the other. could do with some longer cables though, as having everything flat on a shelf stretches them a bit!

need an ATA RAID card now though so I have somewhere to put my other drives. might set myself up a little 20gig mirror for my boot drive while i'm at it. ought to speed things up a little.

might post a pic if anyone is interested (as if you would be!).

Ebonyks

vibe666 - sadly yes, yes i would like to see a pic of your PC's entrails layed out on the shelf.........you lazy cheepskate

i do this for new systems to check if they post...but generally put parts in the case thereafter.

Anyway, i leave the case panel off. This is mainly due to the big gash down the center of it from a boring Sunday afternoon attempting a case window with a dremmel. The idea was quickly forgotten after a few pints that night. Stuck a light in and now it looks fine.

There is problems with dust, nothing major though. Temps are fine.

vibe666

might have to wait till the morning as it's in the bedroom and the g/f will think i'm taking pervy pics of her asleep and kill me on the spot.

only reason its there at all is i have planned to get a case for it, but wanted to make sure it was working. my other pc is a laptop and i just got a 19" monitor and wanted to have a system up and running to watch movies and TV in the bedroom.

as it was the guy i got the tv card off forgot to post the audio pass though cable, so i have no sound on the tv part yet, although for a fiver i can't complain cos the picture is pretty good.

will post a pic in the morning sometime anyway for prosterity.

jow

Hi,

I would propose to keep the lid on the case.

Three reasons for that:
1. (like some posters said before ) you will get a well defined airflow through your case. It means cold air comes from the front and get sucked out by the power supply (ATX standard says that the power supply has to suck the air out. I had never an PSU which blows air in the case...). The air goes over your components, cool them and leaves the case.

2. Noise level: A PC with a closed side panel should be less noisy than with an open one!

3. Please do not forget the EMV disturbances. This is no joke. A PC produces a lot of electronic radiation (at several wave lenghts). The case is designed to absorb this radiation. If you leave your case open it is likely that you disturb the television, radio etc. of your neighbour. There are rumors that it might be bad for your health also (like mobile phones) but this is not _really_ confirmed.
This is the reason why I never recommend acrylic cases. Even Side panels with windows are not optimal for that reason.

So: why leave it off? If you need to take it off because of high temperatures, there is something wrong with your cooling.

regards,

jow

Gerry

You don't have to spend an awful amount on a case to get good cooling. It just needs to have places to mount fans, if they are restrictive, you can remove the restriction with a dremel. Cases are available for €30 - €35 which have fan mounts front and back.
If you are having trouble with cpu temps , you can add ducting to bring cold air directly to the cpu.

Praetorian

My PC temps are lower with the side panel on. I guess the otis cooling system helps too! The Abit IC7-MAX3 "Canterwood" is the best mobo I've ever used. My cpu is a 3ghz p4 (c) @ 3.3. CPU Temps are ~50c idle or with load. Case temps are ~25c. There is good air flow in my system (3 case fan's). With the side panel off, temps raise about 2-3 degrees.

vibe666

here's my case anyway. lots of fresh air around it anyway

OfflerCrocGod

Yep plenty of air flow.....there is nothing wrong with taking the cover off, it's the only way I can stop my PC from going up on fire:D. Messing apart my idles can be as low as 26C with no side cover and 23C for the System temps AthlonXP1900+ on load though I can hit 60C easy 30C for the system. Those temps may seem a bit screwed to some of you guys so I'll explain.....I have 2 fans both at low RPMs ( 1500 ) and thats it and since my room is quite cold most of the time the idles are really low but when you push the PC the temps really fly high because the fans cant handle it. Both the fans are pointed at the CPU by the way and they are at such low revs cause I hate noise!. My PC is quiet enough now cause of all this messing about by me:D.