On Mon, 2005-03-28 at 11:56 +0000, Howard Winter wrote:
> Herbert,
> 
> On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:23:34 -0500, Herbert Graf wrote:
> 
> > I just put together an ATX Athlon 64 system, it had 7 fans. That's
> > right, 7 fans. Two fans in the power supply, one fan on the front of the
> > case, one fan on the back, one fan on the side, one fan on the NB and
> > finally another fan on the GPU. Suffice it to say that is one LOUD
> > computer. And even with all that because of the orientation of the DIMMs
> > they COOK.
> 
> For some reason the tendency recently has been to add more exhaust fans, first on the back below the PSU 
> (which is exhausting anyway), then the side and/or the top of the case - presumably because "getting the heat 
> out" is the aim.  But still with just one intake fan on the front (occasionally two).  The net result is a 
> lowering of air pressure inside the case, which reduces the cooling effect.  (Consider the absolute, having a 
> vacuum in the case, to see why lowering the pressure is a Bad Thing!)  Having sufficient air blown into the 
> case is vital, and improving or adding to the intake fans would be a good way to go, although the flow has to 
> be considered - no point reversing the rear case fan unles you can divert the air downwards, because otherwise 
> it will just go straight out through the PSU without doing any good.

Please note that the choice of fans for the PC I built was not my own, I
was just the monkey putting everything together.

But you are correct, in all the systems I'm built for myself I have one
or two large fans sucking air INTO the case. 

The problem with that though is it makes things very noisy, fans at the
back of a case, even if excessive in number, tend to produce less noise
since they are buried so deeply. And, of course, there's the marketing
factor of "I have 7 fans, the competition ONLY have 6...".

If I were forced to build a system right now based on an Intel CPU I
would certainly NOT choose the P4, it's simply to wasteful in every way.
The Pentium M is far more efficient and almost as powerful. TTYL

-----------------------------
Herbert's PIC Stuff:
http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

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