Dell T3600 overheating

[Mormislaw]

Hi!
I've recently bought and upgraded a Dell Precision T3600 workstation, and it's now a decent computer, i guess?

Specs:
- Intel Xeon E5-2680 with an Intel C608 Chipset
- Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Nitro

- 32GB of 1600MHz ECC DDR3 RAM

- 685W Dell PSU

 

But it's got one big issue -  the computer gets really hot, and I can't really control the fans.
The temperatures go up to 92 degrees while gaming, with fans being at under 800rpm and ramping up to about 4000rpm when the CPU temp reaches 90 degrees.

 

There's no good way to control the fans in the BIOS - I have settings: auto, low, medium, high. I have it set on auto. When I set it on low it overheated, when I set it to medium or high - it was unbearably loud.

I've tried to set the fans using SpeedFan - from 0 to 66 percent they were idling at about 600rpm, and when I set the to 67% or more, they ramped up to 4000

 

I was even so desperate that I've tried to make tunnels for air to go through the CPU heatsink out of cardboard, but it made little to no difference. And now I don't know what to do, stuck with an unbearably loud computer, yet still exceeding 90 degrees.

 

What do, friends?

 

I'd really appreciate any help.

 

 

Sorry for any mistakes, english is my second language

 

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, Mormislaw said:

Sorry for any mistakes, english is my second language

You are fine. I have a T5610 with twin Xeons. If your system is built like mine, the heat sink over the CPU is passive. This can be changed to an active one, let me see if I can find a link on how it's done.

 

Forget about changing the BIOS, it's not designed for that.

 

EDIT, link

 

 

 

[Ajukrezi]

sounds like a horrible dell fan controller.
you can always add a case fan. but first try out this program

 

[Mormislaw]

19 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

You are fine. I have a T5610 with twin Xeons. If your system is built like mine, the heat sink over the CPU is passive. This can be changed to an active one, let me see if I can find a link on how it's done.

 

Forget about changing the BIOS, it's not designed for that.

 

EDIT, link

 

 

 

Did you manage to do this? If so, did the cooler mount fine? I'm wondering If i should use buy a new ILM, such as this one or just try to screw the new cooler in with the screws from the old Dell one. The cooler I'm planning to use doesn't have springs, it just screws into the ILM, but I don't think I can mount it on the original because the screw holes are too low

[Mormislaw]

19 hours ago, Ajukrezi said:

sounds like a horrible dell fan controller.
you can always add a case fan. but first try out this program

 

This program doesn't work on my computer. SpeedFan has a Dell mode - this one doesn't, without it both programs don't even detect the fans

[Radium_Angel]

4 hours ago, Mormislaw said:

Did you manage to do this?

I had considered this, but ultimately I went a different route and attached fans to the existing heat sinks, and one to the back inside of the PC, which worked for me just fine

[nomisuke77]

This is just an update for anyone who happens across this thread over a year later.

 

In my experience the T3600 originally came with an E5-1607. Even though this is a 130W TDP CPU, it is only 4 cores and therefore requires much less cooling. The stock cooling assembly most likely was not designed for something more robust. I have experienced this exact phenomenon myself because I upgraded from the E5-1607 to the E5-2680 and my idle temps went from 50°C to over 80°C. I believe the other fan settings in the BIOS are taking into account that this is a server and if you need to run them at anything higher than medium it will hopefully be in a room without people who need to yell over it.

 

Upon removing the CPU cooler to upgrade the processor I noticed the same thing Aaron did: the heat pipes were horribly misaligned with the cold plate. Less than 50% of the surface area of the cooler was making contact with the IHS of the CPU. After upgrading the processor and noticing that the temperatures were way too high for my liking, I attempted to remove the gaps between the pipes and the cold plate by lapping the heat sink. This was a huge mistake as I quickly sanded right through the copper pipes. However, upon doing so, I also noticed that they were completely hollow. There was no fluid, no wick, and not even any type of groove or pattern inside the copper pipes to capture heat. It was as if someone put copper straws inside a fin assembly.

 

I upgraded to the Hyper 212 Evo and my temps went down to 42°C idle. This led to the conclusion that the Dell OEM CPU cooler is just a piece of junk and the fans require far too much RPM in order to move a decent amount of air. I spliced the 4-pin fan header from the 212 Evo fan into the 5-pin Dell connector by using an online wiring diagram and "auto" was perfectly fine. The only problem is I can't get the panel back on the case because the 212 Evo is too high. However, at least I know it's not impossible to cool. When I get around to it I'll order the Noctua or a similar lower-profile cooler.