[ale] Hardware woes + HEAT

[James P. Kinney III]

Jenn,
Glad to hear the fan was a simple fix. 

All,
As is probably clear (from a physicist viewpoint at least) heat is a
major issue in electronics. It is getting even more problematic.

The push for quieter systems (low flow fans, low power chips, etc) is
great for the hearing. I have found that the biggest boon to system
cooling is providing enough air flow through the box at a temperature
that can quickly absorb the heat from inside the box. 

With some judiciously applied flex-duct and duct tape, a small room AC
unit can be mounted completely outdoors. A replacement duct front from
plywood, sealed with foam tape, connects to the 6-8" flex-duct that
routes in the window. The air return duct is attached to the air out
port on the power supply. The air supply (the nice cold air) is attached
to the grill work on the bottom of most tower cases. All the other air
vents must be sealed off. The power supply fan can be off. The CPU fan
should be on. 

A typical, small AC (1800 BTU's) can actively cool 4-5 Intel boxes with
fast scsi drives, or 3-4 AMD's with IDE's. The total airflow through the
systems is about what the power supply fan would do, but the internal
air temp is about 40 degrees F instead of the usual 68+ of most normal
rooms. With the AC unit not physically attached to the house, the noise
of it is not noticeable.

-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 



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