Entertainment Center Cooling Mod - Linus DIY Method
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
2,617 words · ~13 min read
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so I've been having some performance issues with my media PC it's got a
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GeForce GTX 660 Ti um some Core I5 or
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something like that in it and basically what happens is I launch a game and it
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runs great for a little while and then
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the frame rate starts to tank now if you're familiar with thermal throttling you probably know what I'm about to show
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you here but if you're not then we'll go
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ahead and show you what's going on so you can see here GPU temperatures are
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pinned at about 101° and then if we go ahead and scroll
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down you can see our fan speed is pinned
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at 80% which is the maximum that it'll do and then finally yes this my friends
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this is the core clock it should be at around 1 GHz plus and instead it's
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hovering between 581 mahz and even
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dipping as low as 191 so this system is thermal throttling
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and there's something that we need to do about
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it the flash Voyager GTX USB 3 drive
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from Corsair provides SSD like performance and fits comfortably in your
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pocket click now to learn more so this
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is the problem even with the graphics card doing nothing sitting and idling
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it's at about 50° so modern gpus don't
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run much hotter than the ambient temperature which means with this
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cabinet closed it is roasting in there even when the computer's not doing
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anything so I guess one solution would be to just have it open all the time but
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uh that's pretty lame and another solution that I was doing which is
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terrible was just hanging the computer out here but you can see I actually
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damaged the lip here quite a bit doing that so obviously we need something
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better so while I could have concluded that the solution is to put a less
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powerful computer in there yeah no we're
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going to add cooling to the cabinet instead so I've gathered a drill
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soldering iron wire stripper saw Dremel tool measuring tape cooling fans fan
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grills fan power splitter inline resistors external power supply for the
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fans or perhaps some sacrificial stuff to do like a DIY something or other a
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hole saw some miscellaneous nuts and bolts clear and electrical tape a paper
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template or for for cutting 120 mm fan
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holes and then a vacuum for cleaning up it's going to be a fun day okay so with
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the system out i' had actually kind of forgotten the configuration of this case
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I thought there was a a vent on the bottom but there isn't other than this
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intake right here so that changes how I had planned to put the fans in but what
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I want to do is I want to get the exhaust from the case so that's the top
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120 mm fan here and then the power supply fan at the back I want to get
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that out of the cabinet and then I want to bring fresh air to the intake which
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for this case the only real intake is
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here on the bottom so what I may end up doing is changing the graphics card from
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a an internal recirculating cooler
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design to like an open cooler design to one that has a rear exhaust on it so
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we'll have to figure that out later let's see if this works first so my original plan was to do 1 120 mm intake
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down here and then I was going to do like a side intake over here to account
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for the two exhausts that I'm going to do at the top back here but um my wife
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actually brought up that if I do decide to put a hole in the bottom of the case
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for some passive intake for the uh the fan on the graphics card then if I just
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put these both here covering the entire bottom of the case I always have a computer here in all likelihoods so uh I
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should just put them both here all right so here we are all the templates are taped into place so I will start by
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drilling out the four holes and then
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hole sawing the middles all right moment of truth time although we did have a
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realization this is a lot thicker than the back material so I'm going to need
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some different bolts but
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whatever
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okay let's check and make sure that these are even the right size
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and that's pretty tight I would have to actually screw them through I'd rather
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have it a little looser Okay Okay so we've got all the holes drilled except
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the big ones and I had kind of a scary
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moment here when I realized my drill just
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barely barely fits so we want to get
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this lined up as perfectly as we can my whole saw is not actually 120 mm it's a
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little bit smaller so I guess if I'm off by a little bit it's not a huge deal cuz
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we're not making the best use of the space anyway but here we go well I got
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started and realized I wasn't wearing safety goggles and the way this spins it
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was basically throwing sawdust right in my face so here we
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go so uh there we
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go piece number one that I accidentally
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Drew on it while I was pulling it up is done let's find out if a fan fit shall
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we so they're going to kind of sit like there
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is although probably on the bottom of the cabinet and then I'll have to I'll
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have to filter them with uh maybe like some Silverstone filters or something
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like that um so there you go there'll be intakes though but the point is just do
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they fit and the answer is yes they do so these fans have little wire
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management Clips here and I realized either I can wire manage them under here
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which is just going to be kind of a pain in the butt or I can just have just the
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one clip hold them down and I can put them in place this
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way so I'll bring them up here manage
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them together over here and then route them to the fan splitter so well this is
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the Moment of Truth where we find out if uh they actually fit so far it's going
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really well there we go all right so that's how they'll go on
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good helper okay so my project has a helper now helper yeah you're a really
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good helper which of course means that I'm making really you know great
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progress at this point um anyway all the fans are on so I don't know if you have
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an angle to see the ones at the back there we go so all the fans are on and
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now I've added the Swift Tac Fan Hub so
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this has a moax power in as well as a pwm control lead that I'm actually not
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going to be using I'm just going to use this for power cuz I'm going to run all
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these fans at full speed they're only 1200 RPM fans so they're they're quite
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quiet so I'm just going to use the included Adhesive Mount here to Mount
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this in the back corner and other than that the cabinet itself I think uh for
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fear of getting ahead of myself is pretty much there uh mostly I didn't use
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grills but at the back for these fans I'm using grills just because with all
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the wires hanging around here I don't want anything getting caught in them
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another thing that I'm going to have to add later is um some kind of a filter
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for these bottom ones oh excuse me EXC me just because
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without a filter those are going to be drawing air directly off the floor so
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I've got a couple options for what I can use I ripped this off a Silverstone case
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ripped this off of a Corsair case but I
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I'll have to figure out a system for mounting it so I can easily get at it
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later oh yeah uh fan control in case I decide the fans are too loud I might use
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these inline resistors so as with any project like this um you know wife road
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blocks can be a bit of an issue and I got the approval for the time and money
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to spend on this little project and then it started taking a lot longer than
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originally advertised so I'm simplifying
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it a little bit totally my choice this
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is the way I wanted to do it not the way that I'm about to tell you so what I
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really wanted to do was I wanted to cut
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this up here okay and then just have
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this power lead lead to a power
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connector on the back of the case so I was just going to find somewhere and Dremel out a rectangular hole and then
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use these SC screws to secure it there then what I was going to do was I was
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going to create a custom adapter so I was going to plug this in here and then
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I was going to splice this one on here so that I could get a uh so that I could
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have the correct lead to plug into my fan controller so we're scrapping that
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and instead we're going to do it what my wife thinks is the more is the less
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ghetto way but I personally think is way more ghetto and we're just going to run
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a four pin Molex connector out this spot
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right here at the back where just like this where
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normally this piece closes down on top
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of the uh the PCI bracket so we're just going to kind of close it in like that
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and we're just going to have a lead like that so I'd love to hear your feedback
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was my way cutting holes in the case the more ghetto way or is my wife's way
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repurposing this hole and then just having a power supply cable hanging out
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here like it's so ugly not that I'm leading you in the direction of which
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way I think you should vote but there you go well if nothing else we've got
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power out the back of the case now so we're pretty much ready to rock all
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right so uh this is I guess a good opportunity to show you guys the
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internals of this case so there's a 140 mm fan in the front that takes in from
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that filtered intake this down here is what I'm going to have to cut up in
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order to get more air flow to this graphics card if it comes to that and
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then um other than that yeah I guess we've got this routed over to the side
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of the CPU socket here so it's going to be pretty much out of the way just going
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to this is my power supply with the custom shortened cables um for Mini ITX
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that I had in my old media PC so I changed my mind about how I'm going to
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mount the fan controller um I decided to screw it in
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just cuz it has spots for that so as long as these are small
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enough uh yeah it's not that ideal is it
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h as long as they don't split then as I go through
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them can they make
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itad yeah am I funny my
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funny there you go I got an endorsement from my 2-year-old I'm funny I'm funny
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to 2-year-olds so everything's wired back
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up now overall I'd say the project was uh well I mean I haven't seen
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temperatures yet but it went really well went really quickly although there was
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one sacrifice that had to be made the receiver dongle for my uh my air mouse
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SL keyboard thing that I actually find very very useful um got rolled over when
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I was showcasing the PC in the first place so that's a real shame but I guess
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now is the Moment of Truth Okay so we've got it put back in there um I'd say it's
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not quite as quiet as I'd like and what I'll probably do as a as a V2 of this of
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this little mod is get two four pin fan
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extensions and then change out the fans for pwm fans and then I'll go from the
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uh from the swifttech pwm splitter to the CPU header and then I'll go from my
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CPU Cooler out to the pwm splitter so I'll use those two extensions there and
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then I'll be able to have my CPU fan and then all four of the cabinet fans
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running according to CPU temp with the Motherboard BIOS so that'll be version
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two but for now it's it's definitely tolerable but let's see what the results are like so at idle we're looking at 41°
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which is a 10° Improvement and uh that is of course not
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the real test so let's get Tomb Raider
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going on and let's uh let's let her cook for a bit shall we okay so I've had the
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same scene running for about half an hour it's time to alt Tab out and see
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how we did GP temperature 94
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95° okay so that's still pretty toasty
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but core clock ah we're even getting
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some turbo boost so yes it's still warm um I think to to take it
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to the next level I would have to do something about the bottom of that
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system or install some kind of a blower
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type GPU so that I'm not recirculating the hot air within the system itself but
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what we've done is we've lowered the cabinet temperatures enough that the
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card is at least able to keep itself under control so there you go mission
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accomplished uh guys like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked
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it leave a comment let me know do you want to see any more of this kind of of
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vloggy here's what I do on my weekends
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sort of cuz I probably wouldn't do this on my weekend if this wasn't my job but
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I did it because I it was my job and I
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kind of wanted to do it so anyway if you want to see more videos like this then
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