Where and How do you place temperature sensors for fan controllers?

I've purchased a Superalien atx tower case which includes a front temp readout that uses two cabled temperature sensors. What are the best locations for these and how are they affixed (thermal paste?) ? The case itself houses 8 fans (2 on the ps). I'll be using a GA-7n400-L, Athlon XP 2500, Thermaltake 'Silent Boost', Geil DDR with copper heatsinks and a TI4600 with an active fan of it's own. This is my first time building a PC, although I've done quite a bit of research and feel confident, I haven't been able to find any good direction on these sensors.
Thanks for any suggestions!

 

Put the sensors in the area you want to read. The temps are going to vary from place to place. Since heat rises, I personally would place one taped to the top of the case, and the other on the CPU or GPU. I'm not sure where you need to put the sense on the CPU, or how it would effect the heat transfer.

 

The probe for the cpu just tapes to the underside of the cpu and thread the wires out between the pins. Thie was in the instructions for a Thermal Take case I just built. As for the other sensor mount it where you want to monitor the temp.

 

If you decide to place a sensor around your cpu (personally I tape it on the underside of the heatsink), get the machine warm and see what the reading is from the sensor and then check another (reliable) source, like your BIOS. Your sensor will likely read a bit cooler, so just make note of the difference and then you have an accurate reading.

If your case is not ventilated well around the drives, you might tape one on the underside of the hard drive on a metal portion of the drive case.

I just finally started measuring the heat from my vid card HS and was surprised to see that it runs much hotter than the cpu I worked so hard to keep cold. And isn't it nice that the boards are designed so that the blistering heat from the vid card lofts gently upward through the case and RIGHT onto the cpu...

sp/\z

 

Spaz... using a bit of "thinking"? & some plumbers tape. LOL I put one of the Zalman fan brackets to use. I mounted a 60mm fan blowing air across it towards the back. Surprisingly it actually works quite well.

 

I did a similar thing (also with a Zalman bracket) blowing air through the empty pci slots (covers removed..hehee) between the sound card and vid card. Actually cooled the entire box down. But I don't want to do anything like that with this new box... and besides, it's not causing me any trouble at this point. Just runs surprisingly hot on warm days.