All good points. I just think that some of the more modern cases have better cooling opportunities, especially those with side-mounted exhaust fans. I think Antec (or maybe CoolerMaster) had a case with a "chimney" of sorts right over where the CPU was expected to be and a case fan on top of that. :-)
Seriously... while more fans won't always help, they are unlikely to hurt as long as they are oriented properly. Especially some top-mounted ones (that's something I may have to try in my existing case!) -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 4:38 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: mid-tower cases On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 12:52 PM, John Aldrich <jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com> wrote: > Yeah... part of the problem in my current case is there is nowhere to put an > intake fan, so all I have is the passive intake at the front. If you have a good spread of exhaust fans, the lack of intake fans won't matter. What's important is not the number of fans, but their placement. You want to maximize air change, and you want to make sure all the nooks and crannies get air change. Simply throwing fans at the problem won't help. Like someone else pointed out -- that case made entirely of fans would actually have horrible cooling, because they all point inwards. The theoretical ideal cooling design is probabbly a straight tube with a single giant intake fan at one end, no exhaust fan, a slight back-pressure, and a dust filter over the intake. That way the case runs at positive pressure and collects no dust. Oh, and no components to obstruct airflow. ;-) > Typically, I set the thermostat for about 78 when we're leaving > for the day and drop it down to about 72-73 when I get home. Temperature in a given room, or in front of the computer case, can vary quite a bit from thermostat nominal. You may want to get a thermometer with min/max feature and put it right in front of the PC to see what it says. I picked one up for like $3 at Wal-Mart once. I've used it to profile various facilities on the cheap. I've found up to 15 degrees difference between spots in some places. > I did notice that when I have VNC Server running and am accessing the local > console the CPU temp climbs, but if I shut down the VNC server it drops ... VNC can use a lot of CPU time, so that makes sense. The processor will reduce its power usage when its idle, so it produces less heat. If you're worried about CPU temperature in particular, try removing the heatsink, cleaning off the contact surface, applying a new coat of heatsink grease, and re-seating it. Sometimes the heatsink just isn't making good contact with the processor's heat spreader. If that doesn't work, investing in a better heatsink+fan is likely a good idea, as others have suggested. You don't need one of the expensive, overly-elaborate "bling" designs, just something that will make good contact and dissipate the heat well. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
