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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )

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To: pae who wrote (3300)	10/30/1998 3:40:00 PM
From: Dirk Hente	Read Replies (1) of 14778

[pc-cooling] Its always a good idea to do some experiments to find out whats the most efficient way to reduce temperature in a pc housing. Because pc-enclosures varies very much in size and construction there is no simple guideline for the thermal management of a pc. Even adding a front side fan to an existing power supply fan is not always the best solution for a minimal cpu temperature (I'll come back to that later). Unfortunately, for the hobbyist there is no way other than to do some experiments. Professionals have at least the chance do some simulation, e.g. by using a software for 'computational fluid dynamics =CFD'. A very well known software for CFD is 'Flotherm' created by FLOMERICS. Well it's quite expensive 20k$ per year or so. But you may get some theoretical insight if you have a look at some of the excellent application notes from FLOMERICS: flotherm.com There is one interesting note available @ flotherm.com about the Radical redesign of a desktop PC where they demonstrate how you can optimize the temperature distribution by elimination of the front side fan (I was a bit surprised as well). At least this note shows that it's not always the best solution by simply adding a front side fan. There is another interesting note available which deals with the well discussed topic about the blowing direction of a power supply fan: in or out? Unfortunately this technical note ('Compact Modeling of Power Supplies', Technical Note #mm6.0B,@ flotherm.com is only available for FLOMERICS customers for downloading. Maybe for those who are interested you can just write to FLOMERICS and ask for a copy of it. The outcome of this note is, that the configuration where the power supply fan blows into the pc housing (directly onto the cpu) seems to be favourable wrt cpu temperature. In both cases the air enters/exits the housing through the vents (i.e. there is no 2nd fan). For my project at home, I've switched to dual Celeron 300A@464MHZ in the meantime (yeah..after going through the drilling procedure), I'm still in the preparation phase for an efficient cooling system. So far I've added just a second fan at the front side which blows into the case while the second one in the power supply unit (PSU) blows out of the housing. But I think my PSU is not according to the current standard (forgot the name) which requires that the PSU fan is faced to the CPU and not to the HD section in the pc case. Both of my Celerons have a standard cooling unit with one small fan attached to it..so nothing special. But everything runs stable for weeks now even tho I'm doing quite heavy floating point stuff for hours on my pc (remember I'm not a gamer..so I can't tell you about Quake). Anyway, I want to go even higher and I already managed to keep my system running at 504MHZ with a very big heat sink for about 4 hours. But that was not a very efficient cooling. Currently my favourite is a water cooling system. For a nice treatment of this topic I recently found an excellent design guide here: r-theta.com (Aqua sink)

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