Originally posted by Kivada
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PSU on the bottom, draws from vent in bottom of case. Second bottom vent feeds bottom front fan, also there is a 140mm front fan. All case fans are on a fan controller and can be all the way down to minimum RPMs except when editing video. The FriOCK fans are turned down a bit in normal use too. A 40mm fan is on the northbridge cooler, it and the PSU fan are what you hear at idle.
For a full load like video rendering, the case fan controller goes to half, and CPU fan goes all the way up, and the voltage controller turns it up a lot more. Very loud wide open, but that's for short duration video rendering runs only! Very quiet the rest of the time. Games like Oad load only one core, the CPU fans come up only moderately and there is no need to turn any of the case fans up. The fan on the Radeon HD6750 is resistored down a bit to shut it up, I still never see more than about 55C under hard loads-as long as I don't turn the case fans all the way off! That wil give GPU temps closer to 65C under max GPU load that Scorched3d, Criticalmass, or 0ad can deliver.
There is one caveat: The FriOCK does not use PWM fans, and voltage regulated fans get only a narrow range, forcing use of manual fan control. If you set a full load video render job and don't turn it up, the CPU temp will rise and Kdenlive's "melt" process (the render job) will crash. No damage will occur and the OS stays up, you can turn the fan up and restart the render job! It's just that CPU stability of this particular FX-8120 at 4.4GHZ or more is very dependant on keeping it cool so transistors can switch all the way off. Voltage increases help OC by helping them turn all the way on, at the expense of making turning them all the way off more difficult, just like leakage current in a transistor used over it's intended frequency range in ham radio gear. Thus, the more you overclock, the colder the CPU must be kept, even as the voltage requirement rises! Air is all I've ever played with.
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