[Ham-Computers] Computer Cooling 101

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

I learned a lesson night before last, which in retrospect should in part have 
been obvious.  Our main computer here is in a large tower case that I bought 
around 1997.  It's on its 4th system board and 3rd power supply.  As 
originally supplied, it had a single intake fan in the bottom of the front steel panel, 
plus the power supply's exhaust fan.  At the top rear, it has mounting holes 
for two exhaust fans.  About a year ago during the last system board upgrade I 
was having the random reboot problem and internal temperature was a possible 
candidate.  I installed one and then two fans in the rear, swapped to a 
different new system board (hated the first one anyway, a Gigabyte) and finally 
bought expensive RAM with integral heat sinks.  Some or all of that fixed the 
reboot problem, and it has run 27/7 since before Christmas last year.

Last week I began to notice a whine coming from the box.  I assumed it was 
probably a hard drive getting ready to fail, and wasn't too concerned other than 
with the cost and probable difficulty of locating a replacement.  Night 
before last, I decided to open up the box and see whether I could tell which drive 
was noisy.  Within seconds of sliding the left side cover back, the whine 
frequency started down and then essentially disappeared into the general 
background noise.  Turned out to be the intake fan in the front being "pulled" by the 
three exhaust fans.  The only reason I can think of for why it ran almost a 
year before doing it is that there was some dust buildup on the front steel panel 
inside the plastic front cover, and the air velocity through the remaining 
clear holes in front of the fan must have gone 'way up.

So I removed the front fan and the dust and things are back to quiet.  I'll 
have to remember to add cleaning inside the front cover to the PMS card on this 
machine.  :-)

I wish that I could find another case like this one to put my wife's Gateway 
components into.  It's the easiest tower case to work on or in that I've ever 
encountered.  But there's nothing on the exploded view drawing I got with it 
except a model number.  And the only ID on the front is a large "A" over the 
word "Open".

Robert Downs - Houston
<http://www.wa5cab.com> (Web Store)
MVPA 9480
<wa5cab at cs.com> (Primary email)
<wa5cab at houston.rr.com> (Backup email)