Thoughts on cooling

[Bathman]

I have 3 PC systems all of which are totally fanless. I only deal with DVB-T SD mind you (720x576) so that makes it easier. But I dont think it is dificult to build a cool silent PC just research.

[Fatman_do]

I'm thinking the air can't go anywhere, but room/area fans could make more noise, which is already an issue. (When it starts to record, the fans on sensors in the case throttle up like a jet fighter.)

I have a few options. I never liked the fact that the PC pressed right against the back of the shelf, pressing cables. I think I may have to convince my wife that this expensive, oak, cabinet has to be modified. (She's not too attached anyway, and the back is just cheap panneling.)

I should also re-evaluate the internal cooling airflow. I added a fan hastily on the side of the fan to vent hot air, but I don't know if I have any good intake from the other side to provide for flow. I think the case has fans that blow up, but that hit's the top of the shelf.

I guess I just gotta pay attention to airflow if I really want my system to scream coolly.

If it blows out of the top, and you only have an inch or so, that can be tricky.

You should be able to put a hole in the back side of the cabinet near where the power supply fan is (or any other case fans), in an attempt to give it a straight shot out the back.

On the top, depending on the situation, you may be able to fashion a duct to direct the hot air out the front or back. I would try some decent cardboard (like from a shipping box) and play around with shape needed. If it works out good, you could always paint it or use better materials.

[elite]

Maybe a large, slow fan extracting at the back of the cabinet? (be carefull about introducing noise through vibration)

Zalman do a cpu fan that has a duct venting out of the case, but it sounds like you have more of an issue with cabinet

[stustunz]

Water cooling it beats the pants off anything else why do you thing they use it in cars

[psycik]

Water cooling it beats the pants off anything else why do you thing they use it in cars

Water cooling isn't going to do much for the 4 tuners i have in my case since they don't have room in between them to run hoses and water blocks.

Tuner cards gets really hot- the analogue ones are worse I think cos they actively have some conversion to do.

[stustunz]

yeah true but its great for cpu
to tell you the truth i run one machine with water cooling
but the other has 3 analog tuners pvr500,pvr150 with top off and big fan blowing down onto them once in the cabinet you cant see the top is off but if i dont then one of the pvr500 tuners stops working

[mikiem]

Don't know if this will help anyone come up with ideas or not...

For prototyping cooling/exhaust ducts & the like, I've had fair success using a hot glue gun along with the plastic containers & bottles & such lying around that various products come in; i.e. many water bottles match std. 80 mm fans for example. For something more polished, you can often pick up thin sheets of aluminum at building supply stores or the local hardware -- I make a cardboard & tape mockup 1st... These can work very well with squirrel cage fans, and the whole thing fits where a normal fan wouldn't.

I would guess that using some sort of ducting & placing the actual fans behind the furniture holding your hardware might make any noise much less noticeable, because you don't have the sound resonance & reflection, plus any direct sound from the fans is blocked by the cabinet etc.

Inside the case you can also mount fans wherever. Surplus outlets like sciplus.com in the U.S. sometimes have all sorts of odd cooling gear, like at one time a ganged multi-fan setup from Dell that overall was pretty small. Best Buy also carried a fan on a bendable stalk I think that could be mounted and placed in quite a few places where nothing else would work.

For multiple tuner cards with empty slots between them, fans in the card slots might help, and should be able to find those on-line. Without the slots in between, maybe drill or fabricate some sort of exhaust holes on the mounting brackets so air would flow over the tuners?

However you try to engineer it, do remember that anything that reduces temps inside the case helps... If you water cool the cpu for instance, that will help the tuners if/when it reduces the overall in-case temps. Cooling the tuners themselves might only be *re*-active -- in response to an overheated environment -- while eliminating the cause of the environment heating up would be *pro*-active.