"fans seems to work fine" & "It's not enough that they spin"...

[Tim]

Tim:
>> But it's not just*a*  fan, you have PSU fans, CPU fans, and sometimes a
>> case fan.  A box with one large fan ducted to all the other heatsinks
>> makes things a lot quieter, and more reliable.

Joe Zeff:
> I don't know about anybody else on this list, but that suggestion makes 
> the words "single point of failure" come to mind.

Well, you have a large (almost) external fan, which can be easily seen
and replaced, and cheaply, and quickly.  Versus about three internal
fans (PSU, CPU, GPU) that can't be seen (so you have no idea about dust
build up), can't be easily replaced (it's always a big dissembly job),
can't always be replaced (they're often custom fittings, that may not be
available, anymore, a couple of years after manufacture, and may
comprise non-removable parts), and may be ridiculously expensive to
replace (one $10 fan versus one or more $60 special cooling heatsink and
fan assembly, and the chances are that more than one fan reaches
end-of-life around the same time).

Not to mention that a fan death doesn't have to be a computer death,
just an unplanned shutdown, as the motherboard monitors detect a fan has
stopped spinning.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

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