Case/Cooling Upgrade?

I bought a desktop a lil while back (first desktop after 4 laptops) and Ive been thinking of getting a new case, and upgrade the coolin. Im not sure, but Ive heard that a new case could help keeping the internals cooler on your PC. Im hoping it does, because I idle at about 40c and wanna try to get it cooler.

I also have 2 fans (one on processor and one on the back) so I was wondering if it would be worth it to make an intake on the front of the case, and use the rear as an exhaust, to give much more airflow inside. I was thinking about doing water cooling, but Im almost positive that its not easy to do.

So basically, would it be easy to swap out cases, and would it be worth it to do so for cooling purposes only (could care less bout looks) or would keeping the current case and making an intake vent and throwing an extra fan in it be good enough?

Keep in mind, as far as messing with any hardware, Im a n00b, so youll have to keep it dumbed down a bit to make sure I understand well enough. Thanks!

 

You have to rip EVERYTHING out of your current case to put everything in your new casem and things kind of have to go in, in a certain order. Also, my temps are around 40C idle and 45-55C while playing games. You ought to keep your current setup, and MAYBE consider a new heatsink and fan for your processor.

 

I'd also agree that 40C at idle is pretty good. While you haven't said what mobo/CPU you're running, I would guess that you could do a lot of work and see very little return for it. You'd have to take some pretty extreme measures (or water cooling) to reduce your CPU temp by more than a few degrees.

But what sort of full-load temps are you getting? If they're more than, say, 50C, it might be worth your while to upgrade your fan/heatsink -- and maybe add the intake fan.

A check you can make: measure the intake and exhaust temps for your case. For the exhaust temp, take it at the fan at the back below the PSU fan. If there's more than 5C difference between the two, the work might be worthwhile.If not, you've already got good airflow. Why suffer the added noise of another case fan?

 

Sorry about that, my setup is:
Motherboard - MSI RS480M2/RX480M2 (MS-7093) (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, LAN, IEEE-1394)
Graphics Card - nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E
Processor - AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3500+
Memory - Gig of RAM

Its a stock set up for the HP a1130n, save for the graphics card.

 

Best you can do pretty much is look into a new heatsink and fan. AND a heatsink and fan for your video card.

Recommended heatsink for video card : Arctic Cooling NV Silencer 6 (Rev. 2) perfect for YOUR video card.

Recommended heatsink+fans for CPU : Thermaltake, Coolermaster, Zalman and then watercooling. (thermaltake, coolermaster and zalman are brands)

 

thermalright 90c is probably the best hsf - I get ~30c idle ~35-40c load. I had a zalman 7000alcu got abbout ~35-40c idle 45-50c load

 

Forgot thermalright