Question regarding CPU cooler.

[EmuFan]

So, i have a Socket 775 CPU cooler which works fine, however, the cooling fan is shit. It has those rubber knobs attached to the cooler which are now broken, and i am not able to purchase another one for the moment. So, today i was tired of taping the fan on the cooler all the time (The heat makes the tape go off) So here´s the question: I have two perfectly functional fans on the sidelid of the computer that blows directly at the cooler (With cool lights on lol). Will that be enough cooling? At least as a temporary solution?

 

[smcd]

You might also try underclocking and lowering the voltage just in case?

 

[Toasty]

Depending on your CPU and the heatsink on it, passive cooling may work fine or it may not. If you're feeling adventurous, I'd download SpeedFan if you don't already have a program to monitor your CPU's temperature and compare the temps with and without the fan when performing various tasks. I'd basically go through all the steps that someone who's overclocked their CPU would go through. CPU Burn-in is a good utility if you want to stress your CPU to make sure it's stable. (Start a test with error-checking before you go to bed and let it run all night. If it finishes without errors, your CPU should be stable enough with whatever cooling is on it.) If you run into overheating and/or stability problems, underclocking like smcd suggested should help, though you'll obviously sacrifice some performance.

 

[Cyberman]

I second Toasty's suggestion get Speed fan and watch your CPU temperature, if you play games then you might have a problem (issue ).
CPU's consume energy linearly proportional to there clock speed so the die temperature goes up linearly with clock speed. I suggest CLEANING any dirt off the heat sink before you experiment. Lots of dust collects on these things and that in turn reduces the efficacy of the transfer of heat to the air passing over it.
As for active versus passive, consider that all CPU's have those fans on them for a reason. There is a fair bit of a safety margin but if you don't want your machine shutting down permanently be very cautious.

Cyb

 

[EmuFan]

Thanks for the input guys, i will try Speedfan, and i´ll see how it goes. Meanwhile i´m going to try a temporary fix on the fan until i get a new one. A better one. Without rubber knobs. They don´t last in that temperature. I hope that the fans on the sidelid does a little job, the computer is still on, no slowdowns or anything...

Btw, my CPU is a pretty new type, isn´t it? Because it doesn´t have like 100 pins on it, you can just put it right on the motherboard, no stress.

 

[Cyberman]

If you said it was socket 754 then it has 754 pins. The reason it mounts easily is the ZIF (Zero Insertion Force) socket.

Cyb

 

[Toasty]

It was Socket 775, and those CPUs don't actually have pins on them at all! (The motherboard has the pins and the CPU has contact points on it.) To date, it's Intel's latest desktop CPU socket.

 

[EmuFan]

Sweet. it´s no more then 2.80 GHz, which is fine in most cases, but i have some pretty power demanding games, so i want a better one.

On to the subject, i had SpeedFan running for quite some time, and was pleased to see, after i removed the shitty fan, that the temperatures didn´t increase as much as i feared, talking 2-5 degrees(celsius, that is) which i can obviously thank the two fans on the sidelid for, plus i have a big fan on the back and front, and a smaller one at the top, so i guess my computer gets enough cooling.

But since i have been quite a nervewreck lately, and are REALLY bad at handling stress, i decided to try to at least make the fan stay on the cooler. So i got the cooler out and went nuts with some tape (not on crucial areas, mind you) i managed to make it stick. It´s a pretty cheap solution, i know, but hopefully it will work for now.

Btw, it´s pretty sweet that my CPU don´t have any pins, i hated those..First time i tried to insert a CPU (long time ago, mind you) i managed to bend a bunch of them pretty badly...And there´s a LOT of pins, so i had to let it go and buy a new one. I was seriously pissed, because i was short on cash, so i had to buy a crappier one...

 

[Toasty]

If your case fans keep it cool enough even when it's under stress, I wouldn't worry about a fan being attached to the heat sink. (In fact, passive cooling could probably even be a permanent solution.) How hot does it get when loaded? I have an HTPC that just uses case fans to cool the CPU and it works very well with a good heat sink. (Of course, it's a Pentium E, which has the advantage of a low clock speed and power efficient architecture, but 2.8 GHz isn't too fast for a Netburst chip either.)

Netburst chips, like yours, seem to be pretty safe to run as high as around 65 degrees C, from what I've heard (I can't speak from experience on those chips) so as long as it doesn't go over that and it remains stable, I'd let my laziness go to town and leave it as it is. You even get a quieter computer as a bonus.