[plug] Hot and bothered CPU hankers for cool breeze

[Cameron Patrick]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 05:30:09PM +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:

| > Generally a CPU will run at 55-80 degrees but will give serious errors
| > 85-90 degrees is where it starts to fry.
| 
| AMD seem to cope with 80C quite well.

I've never been game to let them reach that temperature :-/

Another thing to be concerned about is not just your CPU temperature,
but also your HDD temperature.  Often hard drives aren't rated to
withstand the high temperatures that CPUs are, but in a case with poor
ventilation a 7200rpm drive can get quite hot.  Some drives (in my
experience, Seagates but not WDs) can measure their own temperature -
from the output of smartctl:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
[...]
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   034   053   000    Old_age   Always	-       34

The 53C reading was from when the drive was in a different case with
poor airflow, and is probably higher than the drive would like.

See also - http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=7677

| OTOH, you might have meant 80mm ... And they are not all alike.
| If you get one that blows a howling gale (50cfm; 1.4m^3/min) at full
| voltage (12V), then you can lift its "ground" to the 5V rail in
| winter for a civilised noise level. An SPDT switch on the back of
| the machine is all it takes.
| 
| Low-noise fans tend to have much-reduced flow rates for their size.

Incidentally, there are scary people around who run their machines with
low-noise fans off not 7V, but 5V...  http://www.silentpcreview.com/
might be interesting reading for those who are annoyed at how loud their
computers are, although the guys on that site are a bit excessive even
by my standards :-)

Cameron.