Re: Ventilation/cooling of PCs

["paul gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

I run many PC's in my house, all but one of them (currently) are in the 3rd
bedroom - IE a normal central heated room, under a desk, not particularly
near a window or any fresh air source, so consequently they all get pretty
hot!

My main server has SEVEN seperate hard drives in it! (all Wide-SCSI), to
make it up to the total of 22GB. (yes I know I could get that much space
with a single drive these days, but all these drives were
"freebies" over
the last few years, and wide-SCSI still outperforms even the latest
Ultra-DMA66 IDE drives by leaps & bounds)
Then there's also the two CD drives, and the DAT drive (lots of motors) - I
Leave this server running (almost) continuously, and have yet to experience
any problems due to heat, and bear in mind that as I got all of these
drives
as freebies, they have all had a past life in various servers in a
commercial environment.
Most drives are designed to run pretty hot - I just bought a new 17.3GB
ultra-DMA66 for my MP3 library, which is rated to run up to 60 degrees
celcius - that's pretty hot!

None of which helps you of course! but I'm surprised to hear of your two
sucessive failures - do you have any indication of the actual temp inside
your PC case? - if you can, measure it, and compare it against the data
sheet for the drive & see if it's within operating range, 'cos if it
is,
then you've got a warranty claim!!

As for what you can do to reduce the temp, there are a couple of things I
can think of: obviously the faster your drive, the hotter it will run,
perhaps think about running a 5400rpm drive instead of a 7200rpm (or even a
10K rpm!?), and there are also dedicated drive fans you can buy, which
mount
at the front of the external 5.25" mounting bays (where there would
normally
be a blanking plate), which are designed to draw air right across the
surface of the individual drive, available from most PC shops (Scan -
www.scan.co.uk) do them for about £8 a go....

Good luck.

Paul Gordon.

>From: Nigel Orr <nigel.orr@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>Subject: [ukha_d] Re: Ventilation/cooling of PCs
>Date: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 11:04:55 +0100
>
>At 02:07 02/08/99 -0700, you wrote:
> >problem, I improved the ventilation in the server PC (bigger box,
> >better airflow) and added a grill to the front of broom cupboard.
>
>Can you add a grill to the top?  Hot air needs somewhere to go- and it
goes
>up.    If you have no vent above the PC, the one at the bottom won't
help
>much.  I'm building a proper wiring closet at the moment, with a vent
at
>the top of the cupboard into the room adjacent- there is probably
enough
>leakage at the bottom to make a vent unnecessary.  There are vents
>available in B&Q etc for blocked up fireplaces etc that would
probably
>suffice, and look unobtrusive.
>
>The down side is that I would expect a black 'plume' to develop on the
>ceiling above where the vent is, as the hot air will tend to carry dust
out
>and deposit it on the ceiling (same as you get above radiators and wall
>lights eventually.  It should be reasonably easy to clean it though!
>
> >Is it possible to buy 'uprated' hard-drives suitable for
> >this sort of continuous use - I haven't been able to find any
myself?
>
>Can't help there, but it might be possible to add fans to the PC to get
air
>moving through it more effectively.  The industrial PCs we use have 2
fans
>on the top of the case, blowing filtered air across the cards and
drives-
>maybe you could modify your case similarly?
>
>Nigel
>--
>Nigel Orr                  Research Associate   O   ______
>         Underwater Acoustics Group,              o / o    \_/(
>Dept of Electrical and Electronic Engineering     (_   <   _ (
>      University of Newcastle Upon Tyne             \______/ \(
>
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