Re: strange behaviour of my desktop
"yes, fans seems to work fine..."
"I'll add the obvious: It's not enough that they spin, there has to be airflow through the heatsink that the fans blow across, and throughout the cabinet. Also, heatsinks need to make good physical contact with what they're attached too."
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Worded twice as good as I could have.. "perfect!"..
Adding to it: There's a LOT more to the "bad-fans syndrome"..
If you sweep the rooms while the computer is running, some of that airborne-dust will be sucked into the tower.. Dust in brass fan-bushings causes heat build-up, which bakes the bearing surface, and bakes the dust into abrasive carbon, which is essentially "ultra-fine sandpaper", which wrecks bearings and bushings, which is why corporations spend $millions on clean-rooms for their computers...
If the tower is set near a hot air vent, the fans will pull-in heat, and heat what they're supposed to be cooling...
You know the CPU fan is failing, and/or plugged with dust, when the OS crashes every hour or so... You really know the CPU's heatsink is seriously dust plugged, when you smell hot dust and overheated electronic components, emitting from the tower...
If the tower is set near a cold air vent, the fans will pull-in airborne dust whenever the computer is running...
Open your towers, and check to see that the fans are silent, and the CPU's heatsink is absolutely dustfree.. If the fan is plugged-up with dust, your computer will eventually bake its hd into trash...
Every old tower that one acquires, the first things to do are: Don't bring it straight into the home.. Bleach wash the case, then open it outside, upwind of it for-sure.. Those things are dust and bug collectors.. Bedbugs is nearly a global epidemic now.. Mites is already a global epidemic... Use air pressure, plus soft brush, to clean the tower inside.. Try to be upwind of the dust, that stuff is seriously bio-toxic.. Bleach what you can... Don't spray it with bug sprays.. Those sprays melt plastic, and damage eyes...
Maybe someone could invent, build, and sell "tower dust cover boxes" to be set on top of towers, so all the air the tower gets is already filtered dustfree... Add a plastic duct-pipe for the tower's exhaust.. Not good to restrict cooling fan exhaust... Maybe RedHat could patent this filter-box, and make some good money on it.. a gift for allowing us to use this wonderful Fedora gem for free... Maybe there should be a link to send RedHat our ideas for them to make money with, in return for the great love they are sharing with humanity and you and me, in the form of "Fedora"...
On Sat, 2011-09-24 at 13:12 -0700, Linda McLeod wrote:
If the tower is set near a hot air vent, the fans will pull-in heat, and heat what they're supposed to be cooling...
Or, even just in a location with poor circulation... Warm air already in the room, and the computer's exhaust sucked back into its inlet.
I've thought, a time or two, about putting some plastic piping from one of the computer's vents over towards the window. So they can suck in some cooler air, in my overly warm workshop. I've not really wanted to get into the expense of trying a liquid cooled system. But the idea of a silent system, one using heatpipes and massive heatsinks appeals to me, because I miss having a silent workroom.
I think the personal computer is a bit of a bad design (in may ways), but just regarding the cooling aspect of it: You have a device that needs to keep cool, operated by people who don't know much about that. It needs forced cooling, yet uses a technique that is prone to failure, and requires maintenance by unskilled owners. And is frequently placed in the worst locations (shoved into a desk, on the floor, against the wall, maybe almost totally enclosed in part of the desk).
On 09/25/2011 09:47 AM, Tim wrote:
It needs forced cooling, yet uses a technique that is prone to failure, and requires maintenance by unskilled owners.
A friend of mine suggests leaving an empty slot between each two cards whenever possible for better ventilation.
Joe Zeff:
A friend of mine suggests leaving an empty slot between each two cards whenever possible for better ventilation.
That can help, though you can't do that with some PC, because of how the IRQs are shared between slots, and motherboard hardware (you may need to put certain cards in certain places).
The best thing for a PC with lots of cards is a case with a fan mounted in the side of the case to blow through them. You can easily feel the difference if you put your fingers on the heatsinks. Cool to the touch, versus almost burn your fingers to touch them.
32-bit ARM or PowerPC systems don't need fans. If you want a quiet computer, buy an old PowerPC Mac used and run a PowerPC Linux distro on it. Doesn't Fedora support PowerPC?
However 64-bit PowerPC requires fans that sound like jet engines. I don't think there are 64-bit ARMs yet but I understand they are coming.
I have a Core Quad Xeon box that I run Fedora on. It has 16 GB of FB-DIMM memory. FB-DIMM has gone out of style because it uses so much more power, but has superior performance for multithreaded applications because multiple cores can read or write to the same stick at the same time.
However, I keep it in my bedroom. If I fall asleep while the door and window are shut, I will wake up in a sweat as the room will become as hot as a sauna!
On Sun, 2011-09-25 at 10:08 -0700, Don Quixote de la Mancha wrote:
32-bit ARM or PowerPC systems don't need fans. If you want a quiet computer, buy an old PowerPC Mac used and run a PowerPC Linux distro on it. Doesn't Fedora support PowerPC?
I'm not in a position to get yet another computer. Though I seem to recall the PowerPC support was less than, or later than, the usual Intel processors.
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.
On 09/26/2011 03:28 AM, Tim wrote:
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.
I don't know about anybody else on this list, but that suggestion makes the words "single point of failure" come to mind.
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.
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Don Quixote de la Manvha -
Joe Zeff -
Linda McLeod -
Tim