[plug] Hot and bothered CPU hankers for cool breeze

[Cameron Patrick]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 06:49:41PM +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:

| Think unattended server in an office without airconditioning; over
| the Xmas/New year period and a heat wave... ambient temp close to
| 40C.

Eeek - 'tis not a good climate for computers :-)

| I just checked and the drive I have reckons it's been to 40C, though
| I can't figure how seeing that it's new and the current temperature
| is near enough to ambient... it has its own 80mm (40cfm) fan. It
| might be a burn-in value at the factory.

Yeah.  My current case has two front fans blowing directly on the HDs,
an extra fan on the back and the PSU fan.  Between all of those fans it
gets more airflow than most machines, even though they're not running at
full speed.

| > | 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/
| 
| Nice... most 12V fans won't kick over at 5V; once the bearings are
| worn and the dust has built up.

Yes.  Even when they're new, a lot of fans don't like running at 5V.
Still, my experience is that just a little bit of air movement from a
fan ticking over slowly is a heck of a lot better than none at all, and
once you start getting louder and faster fans, you quickly get into a
case of diminishing returns.

Cameron.