[NTLUG:Discuss] PC Hardware Issue

[steve]

Robert Pearson wrote:

> Does monitoring, or taking the exhaust air temperature help determine problems?

Only in the crudest possible way.  The problem is the localised
temperature at the surface of each chip - what you see on the exhaust
is a kind of averaged temperature.

The problem with PC's is that you can get 'stagnant' areas between
boards where there is little or no airflow.  Heat builds up in
those areas and fries whatever is there.  The airflow at the exhaust
may still be pretty cool - maybe cooler than you'd expect - precisely
because it ISN'T removing the heat you'd like it to.

> Any ideas out there about the "normal" temperature across a box?
> Measuring airflow CFM (cubic feet per minute) is a little tough but
> that would be  good to know for designing a solution. Brute force is
> probably cheaper. But isn't too much air flow worse than not enough?

The trouble is that the location of the fans depends on the case and
the location of the heat sources depends on where the RAM and CPU
is on the motherboard and where the graphics chips are on the graphics
boards - and those vary a lot from one manufacturer to another.

It's a bear to design a PC from a set of parts precisely because you
don't know these things.

> In my box the SATA drive got so hot you couldn't touch it. The guy at
> the computer store said his did the same and recommended either one of
> those "cool" enclosures or the "attach to the SATA drive" dual fan
> module. I just parked the SATA drive and used an IDE (PATA) I had. I
> did determine the fans were adequate but the airflow pattern missed
> the SATA drive. Bad case design.
> I'm thinking eSATA for the future. Get the heat sources out of the case.

Yeah.

There is a move to take the PCI-express 'lanes' out to connectors at
the back of the case so that graphics units can be external boxes with
their own power supplies and cooling.  nVidia have a high end product
that works like that.

This allows the graphics card manufacturers to have full control over
cooling and power.   While it's messy to have all of those extra boxes
and wires - it would solve these problems at a stroke.  It would also
free peripheral card makers from the constraints of PC slot sizes and
power availability which would be a cool thing.

If this became common, we'd soon see PCI-express lane connectors
showing up on laptops so you could have all the high end graphics
power you get in a desktop while you are at home or in your
office - but still have portability if you are on the move using
the built-in graphics.