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http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content= maxtemp.shtml

The problem with peltier coolers, as far as I know, is that any one with a decent wattage rating will require its own power supply because of the power that it alone draws; you can't just plug it into a spare molex. It consumes more power than it moves.

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/peltier.htm has more information.

Change the voltage. It's easy to take a fan running at the usual 12v and make it run a bit slower (and QUIETER) by mixing voltages. Instead of connecting to the 12v line and ground, cross-connect to the 12v and 5v lines, giving the fan ~7v instead. This is a very easy hybrid approach, only requiring wire strippers and some electrical tape.

A brief, but good explanation is here: http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content= connector.shtml

If you need something more specific, then a fan controller is in order. Some examples (you can build your own internal to the case, but these look better and are obviously more easily accessible):

1 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16835118217
3 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999506
4 channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813999504

You probably don't need anything more than the 3-channel. You can add more than one fan per channel on most decent controllers, as long as you set them high enough to get past initial start-up. If you have a large box like my RAID5 system (2x 120mm, 3x 80mm), you probably need the 4-channel fan controller.

You might want to look at peltier devices. No moving parts, all semiconductor. The overclocking crowd experimented with them years ago, but I think they turned out to be too unreliable. They were usually used inbetween the CPU and heatsink/fan to cool the CPU while making the heatsink hotter. The problem (from what I gather) is that when when (not if) they failed, they suddenly become an insulator between your CPU and heatsink. Not good.

A Peltier Element

Popular with the OC'ing crowd..

Funny, I was just thinking about something like this.. My idea wasn't transparent though. Generally, office windows are too big, and frequently blocked by furnature. 8-foot tall windows do give a pretty good surface area to work with.

What if....

Take a reasonable area of the window, and mount solar cells and peltier elements flush to the window. Admitted, it won't work on all sides of the buildings, but 50% of most buildings could use it.

The solar panels aren't enough to say run the whole office, but they would be good for powering the peltier elements, and supplementing the building power. Say it took 25% of the load off the building, that would be substantial.

Peltier elements are usually good for a 70 degree difference in temperature between the front and back of the element. So, if it's 100 degrees on the hot side, it could be 30 degrees on the cool side. Ahhh, on a 100 degree day, wouldn't it be nice to be in a cold office?

Many buildings (architects can argue this all day) have a decent space between floors, for ducts, plumbing, power, and the thickness of the floor itself. The outside of the building in those spaces is unused non-window space. If the buildings, by design, used that space for solar panels, and used peltier coolers as part of their cooling system, cooling at least part of the outside surface in the summer and heating it in the winter, the power reduction would be tremendous.

Most of the buildings I've worked in for long durations were in the southern part of the US. Those buildings usually require cooling year round to maintain the appropriate temperatures, thanks to all the hot equipment we run inside.

Just my thoughts.

• peltier coolers to achieve low CPU temp.
• watercooling to cool the hot side of the peltier, watercooling blocks are generally in copper, or in silver (beware werewolves), the lot is affixed to the CPU with dielectric grease. The cooling liquid is distilled water, which does not conduct electricity, not alcohol, nor liquid sodium.
• neopren pockets to protect the mobo from condensation

Yupp, a peltier element

Why not Peltier Coolers?

Anyhoo, enough about me... you need to Google more often. Several helpful links:

Hot Spot - How Modern Processors Cope With Heat Emergencies - Goes over different bad things that can happen. It seems newer CPUs are designed to know when it gets too hot and will hang themselves to protect the hardware.

The Heat Sink Guide: Maximum CPU temperatures - Gives ya the maximum temperature before your CPU's inards are like melted butter. But it seems 60 degrees celcius is ok (140 degress fahrenheit).

Seriously man, whip out your Google when you don't know what to do
... or do you run Windoze? j/k :)

Does anybody know of a good source for aluminum/copper/whatever fin material to make a heatsink for a harddrive? IE: remove the stickers from the top, light coat of heatsink grease, apply large heatsink, maybe with zip ties or some form of clip. Maybe if the fins stuck up half the bay height, you could install the drive above upside down and do likewise with it, and place a grill in the bezel slot to allow air to be drawn over it by the case fans?
I tried google, and the closest thing I found was the The coolermaster Cool Drive, which seems to be crippled by the need to stay in a single 5.25" bay, and therefore probably dosen't supply anywhere near enough airflow space or fin area.

I agree with the Alpha PAL8045 recommendation, but be careful with comparing CPU temps. Since the Athlons don't have an internal temperature diode, the reported temperature is heavily dependant on the motherboard. I strongly doubt that your CPU is actually 30 degrees cooler under equivalent conditions.

Any, if you look at the Heatsink Guide's recommendations, you'll see that 65 degrees C is still within the recommended limit.

I guess you haven't heard of overclocking graphics cards. There are web pages devoted to it. Here are a few:

How to OC your video card
and
Another good one
and
Heatsinks for your video card
and
What to look for in an Overclockable video card Also, many times, overclocking involves increasing bus speed, ala 66Mhz to 100Mhz, etc. The fact that you said that alone tells me you don't know very much about overclocking. You might want to read up on the various facets of overclocking, you might look at your computer in a totally different way.
P.S. Why is it ok for people to perform a software upgrade to get a 33Mhz IDE bus to run at 66Mhz (vendor approved, yes I am talking about the BP6 bios upgrades) but its not ok for people to change a setting or two in their bios? I bet all the people bitching about overclockers would download and install a patch to get more performance out of their computers if it came from a vendor but they are reluctent to try something on their own.

SealBeater